Participatory Communication Strategies Used in the Implementation of Public Water Projects in Murang'a County, Case Study of Northern Collector Tunnel, Kenya.

Abstract

Development communication plays a major role in informing and influencing the behavior of the receiver of information. Effective development communication motivates people to participate in planned activities, changing the behavior and attitudes of people and empower them tofocus on interactions between different stakeholders to address a common problem. Community involvement is a very important aspect in implementation of any project. Without community buy-in, a project may never get off the ground or will not be accepted once it is completed. Community involvement is regarded as a nuisance and is ineffectively addressed,or there is a lack of knowledge as to how to engage the community. Either way, the results can be disastrous and would lead to delays in construction, loss of money, filing of law suits, disgruntled citizens providing negative comments to the media or non-acceptance of the revitalization project, the very thing that was supposed to be remedied. The study sought to establish Participatory Communication Strategies used in implementation of public water projects in Murang'a County, study of Northern Collector Tunnel. The Study was anchored on the theory of Kinkaid Convergence Model of Communication. The design was descriptive survey. Target population was 192,589 households. Krejcie and Morgan sampling formula was used to arrive at 384 respondents. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study established that participatory communication strategies play a critical role in the implementation of public water projects. The study recommends the involvement of community grouping, meeting with opinion leaders and the use of various media platforms including radios, local newspapers, and television and billboard illustration will go a long way in facilitating the successful implementation of Northern Collector Tunnel project.