20/05/2026
After more than two decades working in Nepal’s drinking water sector — from rural gravity systems to municipal supplies and lift-based pumping schemes — one thing has become very clear to me:
We are still measuring success by “how many schemes were built”, not by “how reliably water is actually delivered”.
On paper, access figures look encouraging. But ground reality is different. Many systems exist, yet service reliability remains weak. Intermittent supply, water quality concerns, high operational costs, and frequent system downtime are still common across many parts of the country.
This is not just an engineering problem.
In many cases, long-term operation and maintenance (O&M) was never treated as a core priority. Most attention goes into construction and handover, but once the project is completed, accountability for sustained service often becomes unclear.
At the same time, energy cost has emerged as a major challenge, especially for lift and pumping-based systems. In several schemes, electricity alone determines whether the system can sustainably operate or not.
Another critical issue is institutional clarity. After federal restructuring, local governments, user committees, boards, and different management arrangements are often operating with overlapping responsibilities and unclear accountability. This directly affects service delivery and long-term sustainability.
In this context, the ongoing discussions and demonstrations led by FEDWASUN should not simply be viewed as protest. They reflect deeper structural stress within the sector — operational, financial, and institutional.
But these issues cannot be solved through isolated decisions or short-term reactions.
Taxation, electricity tariffs, institutional restructuring, and service delivery models are all interconnected parts of the same system challenge.
From my field experience, three shifts are now essential:
• Move from project-focused thinking to continuous service delivery thinking
• Recognize differentiated electricity tariffs for pumping-based drinking water systems as a public service necessity
• Establish clear co-governance and accountability mechanisms between local governments and user institutions
Nepal’s drinking water sector does not primarily suffer from lack of infrastructure anymore.
The bigger challenge now is decision clarity, institutional accountability, and long-term service governance.
The real question is no longer:
“How many schemes were built?”
The real question is:
“How many people are actually receiving safe, reliable, and sustainable drinking water every day?”
That is the direction the sector now needs to move toward — from infrastructure delivery to service governance.
