Stakeholders’ participation and performance of Kiserian Township Sanitation Project in Kajiado County, Kenya

Abstract

Performance of sanitation projects in Kenya has continued to dwindle day in and day out leading to delayed completion and cost overruns. Kiserian Township Sanitation Project (KTSP) commenced in November 2015 and was planned to be completed by May 2017. However, only 35% of the project was completed by the end of December 2018. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine stakeholders’ participation and performance of the KTSP. The specific objectives were; to assess influence of stakeholders’ participation in project initiation, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation on the performance of KTSP. This study was anchored on Freeman’s stakeholder theory (1984), legitimacy theory (1995), institutional theory (1995) and measurement theory (2015). The study used two research design; descriptive survey and correlation research design. The target population was 663 respondents that involved 600 Beneficiary’s household heads, 42 Appointed contractor's employees, 15 Athi Water Service Board (AWSB) appointed employees, 5 Kajiado county government deployed officers and one (1) Appointed project consultant selected through purposive sampling. The sample size of this study was 303 respondents comprising of 240 direct beneficiary’s household heads, 42 appointed contractor's employees, 15 AWSB appointed employees, 5 Kajiado county government deployed officers and one (1) appointed project consultant. Questionnaires were used to obtain data from beneficiary’s household heads and appointed contractor’s employees from their homes and workplaces respectively. Face-to-face interviews were conducted for the AWSB appointed employees, Kajiado county government deployed officers and appointed project consultant. A pilot study was carried out to check validity and reliability of questionnaires in collecting the data required for the study on a neighbouring water project in Ongata Rongai. SSPS (Version 23.0) was used to code, enter and analyze information and generate reports. The data were analyzed quantitatively using descriptive (mean, standard deviation & frequencies) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation & multiple linear regression). Qualitative data was analyzed thematically. The study results, indicated that there was a positive significant influence of stakeholders’ participation in project initiation (β=0.206, p=0.008), project planning (β=0.223, p=0.006) and project implementation (β=0.143, p=0.049), while, there was no significant influence of stakeholders’ participation in monitoring and evaluation (β=0.098, p=0.174) on the performance of KTSP. However, appointed contractor’s responses indicated that there is no significant influence of stakeholders’ participation in project initiation (β=0.038, p=0.832), project planning (β=0.110, p=0.631) project implementation (β=0.171, p=0.362) and monitoring and evaluation (β=0.375, p=0.69) on the performance of KTSP. The qualitative result indicated shows that there was a significant influence of stakeholders’ participation on the performance of the KTSP. The study concludes that stakeholders’ participation had a significant influence on the performance of the KTSP. It is recommended that stakeholders need to be involved from project initiation, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation to improve performance of Kiserian Sanitation Project.