Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007

11. WATER AND SANITATION SERVICES (WSS)
This module was administered to half of the
national sample0F1 and the sample size for this module
is 2 744 households. The module was commissioned
by the Sustainable Development Department of the
World Bank. The objective of the WSS module and
the complementary qualitative interviews1F2 was to
better understand the sources and quality of WSS
services used by households, how they are affected
by the quality of services, and how they cope with
both real and perceived service shortfalls. The
module included harmonized WSS questions that
were recently developed by the multi-agency Joint
Monitoring Program for Water Supply and
Sanitation in collaboration with experts from three
international survey programs - the Demographic
and Health Survey (DHS), the Multiple Indicator
Cluster Survey (MICS) and the World Health
Survey (WHS).
11.1. Household access to water
The water and sanitation sector was well
developed in the former Yugoslavia. Despite ten
years of very limited investment, especially in terms
of maintenance, WSS have avoided collapse
because of this inherited high initial quality and
broad coverage of existing infrastructure as well as
good technical capacity of the professionals
working in the sector.2F3 As a result 99 percent of the
population has access to an improved3F4 source of
drinking water – 100 percent in Belgrade and
secondary cities and 97.6 percent in rural areas.
The main source of drinking water is the local
pipeline. However, a sizeable percentage (17.4
percent) of rural households use protected wells or
standpipes and an additional 2.3 percent use
unprotected sources, including lakes and streams
(Table 1). A substantial proportion of rural
households (26 percent) have access to urban piped
water systems owing to their proximity to cities; 40
percent of rural communities have their own piped
water system. Access to safe water varies by region
and East Serbia had the lowest access to piped
water.
11.2. Access to water in Belgrade
The importance of Belgrade as a political and
economic centre, as well as the better economic
situation of its residents with many more options
has largely ensured reliable services. The bombing
of Serbia during the NATO attacks in 1999 did not
leave lasting adverse affects on the WSS
infrastructure. The water from the piped water
supply is regularly tested (both chemically and
microbiologically), there have been no epidemics or
large scale illnesses, and the confidence of the users
in this source of water is high. The water
management company financed the installation of
special individual pumps for high rises and
skyscrapers that in the past experienced some
pressure problems. Thus, today even the people
living on the highest floors have adequate water
pressure.
Table 11.1. Water source for drinking4F5 by settlement type
Belgrade Secondary towns Rural
Urban plumbing 93.6 89.1 26.1
Rural (local) plumbing - 3.0 40.1
Public tap/standpipe 0.3 0.4 2.1
Dug well - 1.3 9.3
Protected dug well or standpipe - 0.6 17.4
Bottled water 6.1 5.6 2.6
Unprotected dug well or standpipe - - 2.2
Tanker truck - - 0.1
Lake, river, stream - - 0.1
Total 100% 100% 100%
N=2744
154 Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007