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It has been stated (Mustapha, 1985) that the cost of sewers implemented by community members with technical assistance provided by OPP is about a quarter of that of similar government schemes. The experience in Faisalabad and North-east Lahore suggests that this rather overstates the saving to be made. The average cost of local sewers in North-east Lahore, excluding house connections, was about Rs1070 per household at 198889 prices (GHK and WEDC, 1991). This compares with costs per household in the range Rs9001000 in Faisalabad (1994 prices). However, the cost of connections in North-east Lahore was high, about Rs2500 per household. This is partly because of the system adopted, but it also reflects the inefficiency of connecting all existing discharges to the sewer. This would have been reduced if community management had meant that the sewers and connections could be considered together so that improvments could have been made in on-plot arrangements at the same time that the sewers were constructed. |
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Another important point is that beneficiaries bear the full capital cost of local sewer provison in Orangi and 50 per cent of the cost in the FAUP. It is usually very difficult to recover the costs of government-financed schemes from beneficiaries. The assumption in North-east Lahore was that the costs would be recovered through increased property taxes, but this assumption was hardly realistic when about 90 per cent of householders in the area were exempt from such taxes and the department responsible for setting taxes was quite separate from that managing the upgrading work. Where land is owned by government, it is possible to make a charge for regularizing tenure, the level of which is set to recover infrastructure upgrading costs. However, such schemes rarely achieve complete cost recovery because of the failure to increase regularization charges in line with inflation and to ensure that all residents go through the regularization procedure. It has been estimated (GHK and WEDC, 1991) that in Pakistan the overall cost recovery from plot regularization rarely exceeds 25% per cent of the total cost of infrastructure provision. Thus community management at the local level can greatly reduce the financial burden on government. |
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