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This is a conference paper. ; Scarce financial, human and water resources are major constraints on the delivery of sustainable water supplies to the previously disadvantaged rural communities of South Africa. Of these constraints on sustainability, the scarcity of financial resources has received the most attention. During the period from 1994 –2000, the prevailing view in the South African water sector was that some form of cost recovery from the beneficiary communities was necessary to compensate for the scarcity of external funding. Cost recovery became to be seen as so central to sustainability that, in many schemes, it became almost an end in itself. However pronouncements during the local government election of 2000 regarding the provision of "free" water have called into question the appropriateness of cost recovery. This paper will step back from a detailed assessment of specific cost recovery methodologies and focus on the broad objectives and principles underpinning cost recovery on rural water schemes. It will ask whether the pursuit of cost recovery is really worth the cost given the changing political priorities (best illustrated by the recent promise of 6kl of "free" water) and evidence that efficient cost recovery severely reduces household consumption?

Under some circumstances, the marginal cost approach to infrastructure pricing leads to problems with cost recovery; a pricing policy which ensures that existing assets are efficiently used may not deliver revenue to pay for the costs for maintenance of existing, nor indeed for construction of new infrastructure. For different reasons governments may find this inappropriate and rather want to complement the marginal-cost-pricing principle with a requirement for a sector of the economy to break even. Efficiency would then be jeopardised. The idea behind work package 2 is to establish the micro-aspects of requirements to recover costs over and above marginal costs. This is done for all modes of transport. More precisely, the objective of this report is to establish some core features of how each mode of transport is organised, to describe the implications of cost recovery requirements for each mode and to analyse different mechanisms which would ascertain that each mode covers a larger share of its own costs. ; CATRIN - Cost allocation of transport infrastructure cost

Patients may soon need to present identification to access NHS treatment. Gargie Ahmad, intern at Coram Children's Legal Centre, considers the impact on undocumented migrant children and families

This is a conference paper. ; South Africa has a history of water schemes in rural areas which supply "free water". As in other countries where water schemes have been built and cost recovery has not been implemented, the operation, maintenance and administration of these "free water" schemes has been poor and, as a result, the reliability of the service has declined rapidly. In addition Government is concerned that as more schemes are commissioned the increasing operation and maintenance subsidy burden will leave little or no money for the development of new schemes for those who currently have nothing (DWAF 1994). Because of these issues and to help them develop a cost recovery policy for community water schemes, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry appointed the CSIR to ascertain what unconventional water vending and metering devices, including prepaid meters, are available in South Africa, to evaluate their suitability for use on community water schemes and to evaluate the broad implications of the products on administrative support requirements and costs.

Cost recovery from irrigation in almost all the countries presents a dismal picture. Low cost recovery coupled with declining government finances has led to the deterioration of both the quality of the built infrastructure and institutions managing and governing such infrastructure. This has created a vicious circle of low cost recovery, poor maintenance of infrastructure, inadequate and unreliable water supply, inefficient and corrupt institutions, and unwillingness of the farmers to pay. Breaking this vicious circle primarily requires identifying ways to improve availability of financial resources. Improving cost recovery from all users, including irrigators of the water, offers one of the most important avenues for raising financial resources. The present study examines some of the important issues that impinge on improving the cost recovery in canal irrigation, and assesses the feasibility of some of the efforts being made to improve cost recovery in irrigation to revitalize canal irrigation.