Many rural communities seem to use only a part of the supportive network which is potentially available to them, all requests for help being directed to bureaux, departments and agencies of various government bodies to the exclusion of private support sources. Such requests often do not receive a positive response because many villages have too small a population to fit the guidelines established for public development programmes, which must serve the needs of the whole district or nation and necessarily emphasize larger population centres. A second factor is that the public officials who are contacted tend to be those known personally to the village leadership. This does not allow for the intricacy and breadth of transaction which are necessary to deal with the public sector of any nation in the world today. As a result, residents are resigned to managing without basic facilities such as running water.