Slippage of WASH services - Roundtable Meeting, 24 June 2009

Slippage of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services is now recognised as one of the main challenges facing the WASH Sector. Slippage can be defined as the falling back of a certain level of WASH services to a lower level of services over a defined period of time. Slippage can be caused by a wide range of possible causes, however, all these different causes for slippage are related, in some way or other, to poor WASH governance. This can be read in the statement coming from the Round-table meeting on “Slippage of WASH services” at CESS, Hyderabad in India, 24 June 2009. The meeting was attended by 21 participants from different State governments, NGOs, Universities and international organisations. The meeting is a joint initiative of the WASHCost India programme and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

This round-table had the aim to increase understanding and causes of the fall back of WASH services in terms of quality, quantity and continuity in a relative small period of the full life-cycle after the initial capital investments in order to be able to develop strategies to address this situation.

The initiative has its roots in the globally growing awareness that the WASH sector should be hold accountable in terms of access to services achieved, rather than in supply infrastructure developed as has been the practice over the past decades. ‘Slippage’ becoming part of the language of the sector in India is a good example of this trend.