Income and employment from services
Practical Action
requirements that were 50 - 60% lower, and resulted in 2 - 4 times more employment creation
(ILO, 2003: 10). While this employment may only last for the duration of the construction
period, longer-term and wider benefits should also be considered:
Income multipliers are very high for labour intensive construction (UN-Habitat 2005:
151). The wages earned result in increased consumption, investment and savings, with a
multiplier effect on the local economy. As a result, for every directly generated job there
are 1.5 – 3 jobs that are indirectly generated (ILO, 2003: 13, Cotton et al. 1998: 7).
The capacity and size of the local/domestic construction industry is expanded through the
use of small-scale contractors. The result is a more dynamic industry with better back-
and forward linkages, leading to a greater number of sustainable jobs (ILO, 2003: 13,
and Cotton et al., 1998: 20).
In-depth information and specific case studies about LBT in infrastructure construction can be
found in ILO (2003). ILO (2002) contains a list of LBT-related publications.
Operation, maintenance and management phases
Small-scale private enterprises – there is large scope for service provision operated in the form of
small-scale private enterprises. A common form of income generation from water supply within
slums is the on-sale of water from privately-owned service connections or tubewells. Comparative
advantages of this and other types of informal water service provision may be found in Sansom
(2006a: 6), and an in-depth review of informal water vendors is provided by Kjellén and
McGranahan (2006). Possible roles for water vendors and skilled handpump mechanics within
systems of improved slum infrastructure are considered under the heading ‘Looking beyond the
physical slum boundaries’ below.
The re-sale value of recyclable waste products and compost means that solid waste collection
represents a useful source of income generation for the urban poor. In Dhaka, Bangladesh,
community-managed solid waste collection programmes are run within slums by community
based organisations (CBOs) in conjunction with the watsan interventions of NGOs such as DSK.
Waste is collected by residents using a cart and deposited at secondary collection points for final
disposal by the city authority. The collectors are paid by the users of the service. CBO-run
schemes of this nature are common but require close coordination with the urban authorities to
ensure secondary collection is successfully carried out. Compost making is also common and
efforts are being made to establish reliable income and employment from this.
Possible areas of sanitation service provision are listed above under ‘direct income benefits’ and
more discussion on their role in service delivery can be found in Scott and Sansom (2006).
Figure 1, below, gives monthly revenues of sanitation service providers in Kibera in Nairobi,
Kenya, and shows many of these occupations to compare favourably with the minimum wage for a
general labourer. More may be found in WSP-Africa (2005).
Monthly revenue for different sanitation service providers in Kibera
120 110
97
100
80 72
60 46
58
40 33
18
20
0
General labourer Manual emptier Automated
Automated Certified latrine
minimum wage
emptier - truck emptier - worker
builder
driver
Public toilet
management -
employee
Public toilet
management -
volunteer
Figure 1: Monthly revenue for different sanitation service providers in Kibera, Nairobi
Source: adapted from WSP-Africa (2005: 3)
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