Assessing centralized water supply systems in rural settlements of Kazakhstan

The Sustainable Development Goals established worldwide targets for access to drinking water and sanitation by all. The progress toward these goals, aided by international monitoring, has helped to reduce global disease burden and improve quality of life. Safe drinking water and sanitation are critical determinants of human health and well-being, and the international community has lately deemed their human rights. This research aims at assessing the access to drinking water and sanitation services at the individual home level in the rural villages of Nothern Kazakhstan that either used to have access to piped water systems or currently can enjoy the water from the centralized water systems. The questionnaire was conducted in 10 villages of Pavlodar region to identify the access to drinking water and sanitation services as well as perceived satisfaction with the water source, additionally water samples from existing water sources were analysed. The results show that every fourth household used water from the centralised system. At the same time, every household had a complaint about the water from the system, namely, every fourth has complained about the turbidity of the water, 30% of households were unhappy with the smell and the same amount of households found water very hard. As the raw water source for the centralised systems is underground water, the water quality analysis has shown that the pH fluctuates between 3.90 and 8.96 with an average value of 7.79, which indicates the different nature of the groundwater in the study area.

Half of the respondent households used water from private boreholes where more than half connected water to the house and enjoyed the tap water. Still, 8% of the households used water from an open-source - the Irtysh river. All the above-mentioned households have access to piped water while using the other alternative water sources. All the investigated rural settlements had only private houses and about 82% of the households had toilets outside. 2,3 % of the households had only toilets at home connected to the centralized sewer system and 15% of the households had toilets inside the house connected to septic tanks. This means that more than half of households are still inaccessible for full sanitation and hygiene. In Kazakhstan's rural communities with the access to centralized water systems the disparity in access to better drinking water and sanitation does exist. Monitoring within-country disparity in these metrics can help Kazakhstan achieve progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by identifying neglected regions and implementing strategies to reduce access disparities.