Evaluating compliance of water policy with World Health Organization standards: a case study of county government of Machakos

Date
2017
Authors
Mukunya, Sheila Mueni
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Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Standards are established through consensus building by organizations with the prerequisite authority to do so for purposes of giving guidance for optimal realization of any given objective whilst a public policy being a statement of intent by a public sector entity provides a future solution to the society in a predetermined way. The World Health Organization (WHO) is a body mandated to set norms and standards in the area of international health by the United Nations. The objectives of this study are firstly to determine the application of distance and water consumption standards in the implementation of Machakos County water policy; secondly to establish the number of boreholes and the number of litres required based on the compliance to the WHO standards and thirdly to determine the status of the implementation of the Machakos County Water policy as at May 2017. The World Health Organization (WHO) is a body mandated to set norms and standards in the area of international health by the United Nations since access of water is recognized as a right in as far as the right to health is concerned. The standard with respect to distance is 1 km from home to source of water, while the standard with respect to consumption is 50 litres per capita per day. A hybrid of qualitative and quantitative research methods known as the mixed method approach, was used in this study and the following findings made; i) the full implementation of the Machakos County Water policy will increase the consumption per capita per day by to 52.5litres thus comply with WHO standard on consumption however, it will reduce the distance from the home to the source of water to 3 km which is not in compliance with WHO standard on distance ii) the status of the implementation of the policy as at May 2017 has not reduced the distance as such the distance is still a 5 km while the consumption of water per capita per day has increased to 39.5litres.
Description
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master's Degree in Public Policy and Management (MPPM)
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