Impact of regionalized asset maintenance on the functionality of water pumps in Mbale Sub Region

Abstract

Mbale Sub region has a unique nature that the entire sub region is dependent entirely on piped water from NWSC and hence the region is hit hard in case of any supply gap. The water crisis situation, in case it happens, is consequently severe at times affecting schools, hospitals and resulting in life threatening situations like Cholera as result of operational failures water pumps of the maintenance team. Maintenance in NWSC has taken a number of reforms to currently asset regionalized maintenance. Thus a need for a study of the impact of regionalized asset maintenance on the functionality of water pumps in Mbale sub region. The study objective was to assess the impact of regionalization of asset maintenance on the functionality of pumps in Mbale sub region. The study adopted close ended questionnaires and sampled 120 respondents with in Mbale sub region who were all serving NWSC employees. Quantitative data was then collected, coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics by a special social scientific program, SPSS 10. The findings reveal that regionalized asset maintenance has kept water pumps operational, repairs responded to timely on reporting, production interruptions as a result of failure of water pumps have reduced, compliance to scheduled works is observed and the number of emergency works have lessened. The study recommends that regionalized asset maintenance teams be empowered and facilitated to handle maintenance of water pumps in Mbale sub region to the delight of customer. The study goes ahead to recommend NWSC management to carry out more technical audits as a way of finding out the relevance of some booster stations to the normal operations of areas within the sub region