15.5.1  Selling water at public taps

Public taps (Figure 15.1) are one way of distributing water. The water is sold to people by volume, and customers come to the public tap with water containers. Although many of the public taps are owned and run by the public utility, some are microenterprises: the water is bought from the water utility by the tap attendant and then sold on to consumers at a higher price. A survey of public taps in Addis Ababa (Howard, 2005) found that water was being sold at a price up to eight times the cost of buying directly from the water utility! Public taps are open for only a few hours each day, which can sometimes result in long queues.

Figure 15.1  A public water point in Addis Ababa.