This thesis attempts to assess household water supply and consumption patterns in We/kite town. The main objective of the study is to assess the existing water supply problems and major factors that affect household water consumption in the town. To attaint the above stated objective, relevant data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The major primary source of data for this study was questionnaire survey. A sample of 200 households were selected by using simple random sampling method from the existing two Kebe/es and responses of the questionnaire survey were entered in to SPSS version 12. 0 software for analysis. The mean daily per capita water consumption was calculated at three levels, for households with private meter connection, households without private meter connection and for the whole sample. Thus, the results were found to be 30, 14, and 25 liters respectively. Daily per capita water consumption of those households who do not have their own private meter connection is 14 l/cld. This is lower than the amount specified by Ministry of Water Resources ( 1996) which was 20 liters of water per person per day and far lower than the WHO standard (45 llcld). In order to assess the variations in consumption, ten socio-economic variables were selected as independent variables whereas mean monthly household and mean daily per capita water consumption was taken as dependent ones. For analysis simple correlation, multiple linear regressions, t-test and F- Test were applied. The results show that mean monthly water consumption was found to be statistically significant with household size, education level, income , house ownership status and access, and mean per capita water consumption was found to be statistically significant with household size, education level, occupation, income and access at 95% confidence level for the whole sample. In case of multiple regression analysis household size, income and shower emerged as the best predictors in mean daily per capita water consumption of the households with private meter connection , while for those without private meter connection income and house ownership emerged as best predictors. In conclusion, the existing water supply system of We/kite town is tied up with serious problems in terms of quality and quantity. The state of the existing water supply system is not at the required standard. For that reason, household and per capita water consumption in the town is much lower than the corresponding figures for many towns. Thus, policy and planning on the development of adequate, reliable and sustainable water supply system need to be established.

A Thesis Submitted to Graduate School ofBahir Dar University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Geography