THE ROLE OF DECISION MAKING ON THE MANAGEMENT OF WATER SUPPLY IN MURANG’A COUNTY, KENYA
Abstract
Purpose of the Study: To establish the role of decision making on the management of water supply in Murang’a County, Kenya. To achieve sustainability in water projects, there must be full participation in decision making by all individuals or representatives in all stages of project management.
Statement of the Problem: The mounting evidence indicates that the centrally managed schemes in Kenya are difficult to implement and operate when the communities served are disperse, remote, and relatively small and lack the financial resources and physical social infrastructure needed to support development or to maintain new systems.
Methodology: Interpretivist research philosophy was used and descriptive study design adopted. The target population comprised of the local stakeholders or the beneficiaries (households), water supply and management organizations staffs, National and County Government officials from the Ministry of Water and staff of non-state actors dealing with water in Murang’a County giving a total population of 89,415. This study used a sample size of 225 respondents. This study utilized a self-administered research questionnaire to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. SPSS version 25 was used to aid in data analysis. The regression model was used to measure the relationship between the variables.
Result: The findings revealed that decision making was satisfactory in explaining management of water supply in Murang’a County with R coefficient of 0.765 indicating that decision making as the independent factor had a correlation of 76.5 percent with the dependent variable management of water supply. Regression coefficients results revealed that decision making was positively and significantly related to Management of Water Supply (β=0.812, p=.000<.05).
Conclusion: Decision making in water supply management requires the delivery of accurate scientific information needed in the management. However, involvement of local stakeholders in Murang’a in matters of decision making is still a challenging affair since most of the local community members still feel they are not properly involved in making decisions with regards to the management of water supply in the county.
Recommendation: Stakeholders in the management of water in Murang’a County should strive to involve the local community and beneficiaries of water services in decision making since they need to be involved in every stage of the management of water supply in the County.
Keywords: Decision making, Management, Water, Supply, Murang’a, Kenya.
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