Income and employment from services
Practical Action
and the reliability of their services increases in line with the construction, operation and
maintenance of new infrastructure. Similarly, incomes may increase for others who become
involved in service provision for the first time, providing community labour inputs during
construction (e.g. under community contracting arrangements), or choosing to start operating
services as a business. Such activities may include operating water points as community
enterprises, delivering piped or groundwater to unserved areas, collection of solid waste and
recyclable materials, and compost production. Possible roles for sanitation service providers
include: automated and manual pit emptying services, latrine construction, pit digging, sanitary
mart operators, caretakers of public latrine/shower facilities, and providers of low-cost sewered
systems (Moran and Batley, 2004: 49).
2. Indirect income benefits
Indirect income benefits can also accrue to users of services. Table 1, below, shows four
expected outcomes from the provision of improved services. These outcomes are then linked to
examples of indirect income benefits arising to users.
Table 1: Expected outcomes and indirect income benefits arising from improvements to water,
sanitation, walkways and drainage in slums
Indicator
Outcome
Example of income benefit
Health/injury
Reduced
diarrhoea and
reduced injury
from slips/falls
1. Reduced medical expenses associated with
consultation and treatment of diarrhoea or injury.
2. Fewer work days lost for those suffering and for
family members who are responsible for looking after
them.
3. Fewer costs associated with friends/family visiting the
sick/injured.
Time
Less time spent
accessing
services and
moving around
the slum
4. More time available for productive activity.
5. Increased school attendance by girls and time
available for home education of children (future
income benefit).
6. Ability to arrive punctually for work.
Convenience
Conveniently-
located services
7. Productive uses of water1 for small-scale home
enterprises.
8. Shorter distances carrying water reduces risk of injury
(see benefits 1 – 3 above).
Expenditure
Reduced cost of
services
9. Piped or groundwater available at a greatly reduced
cost per unit volume than that purchased from water
vendors.
10. Protection from fines for making illegal water
connections and/or removing the need to pay bribes
to ensure access to such connections.
It should be noted that it is not reasonable to expect these indirect income benefits to arise for all
users. For example, research into the impact of Practical Action’s urban services programme in
Bangladesh found mean daily time savings for water collection of 56 ± 32 minutes for each
household. However, only 29% of respondents reported using this time for activities relating to
income generation, with the remainder spending it on housework or socialising. Non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) may consider improving linkages to income generating
activities for these people to enable them to use this saved time more productively, if appropriate.
Also, combined water, sanitation and hygiene-promotion interventions produce a mean 33%
reduction in diarrhoeal disease morbidity (Fewtrell et al. 2005). Thus, health-related income
benefits arising from such infrastructure improvements may be enjoyed by some, but not all
users. Finally, it may be difficult to accurately quantify the size of these income benefits without
1 e.g. pottery, agriculture, food production/vending, iced water sales (Blagbrough, 2001), brewing,
laundering clothes (WSSCC, 2006: 21) livestock rearing and motorcycle washing (Noel at al. 2006)
2