The people's choice: community management of RW

Richard W. Pollard (7222289)

English

Loughborough University Institutional Repository

PLENARY SESSIONS: POLLARD1522nd WEDC Conference New Delhi, India, 1996The peoples choice: community management of RWSRichard W. Pollard, IndonesiaREACHING THE UNREACHED: CHALLENGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURYTHROUGHOUT THE INTERNATIONAL Water Supply andSanitation Decade the Government of Indonesia (GOI)made significant investments to improve rural watersupply and sanitation service levels. However, as inmany other countries at that time, targets were notachieved, and the focus on coverage at the expense ofoperation and maintenance led to an unacceptable rate ofsystem failures. During the same period, a number ofgrant-financed pilot and demonstration projects sup-ported by Non-Government Organizations and otherexternal support agencies demonstrated that demand-driven approaches that extensively involve consumers inplanning, financing and managing WSS services weremore likely to be sustainable. The principles that drovethese and other successful projects world-wide were laterembodied in conclusions of the Dublin International Con-ference on Water and the Environment in 1992 and are nowknown as the Dublin Principles1.This paper describes an early effort by GOI and theWorld Bank to incorporate the Dublin Principles in alarge, loan financed, government executed project target-ing poor rural communities. The Water Supply and Sanita-tion Project for Low Income Communities (WSSPLIC), theWorld Bank’s first major investment in RWSS in Indone-sia, represents new thinking within the World Bank abouthow projects for water supply and sanitation and othersectors should be designed and implemented. The trendis away from prescriptive, inflexible modalities and to-ward a process that can be characterized by phases ofListening, Piloting, Demonstrating and Main streaming.In the case of WSSPLIC, much listening was done tolearn from the experiences of both Government Agenciesand NGOs in the 1980s and early 1990s. The work of someNGOs and the Government’s Bengkulu-Lampung RWSSProject provided the pilot experience. WSSPLIC itself canbe characterized as a demonstration project which isshowing how the Dublin Principles can be applied in alarge scale investment within a government institutionalenvironment. The lessons learned from implementingWSSPLIC should tell us how to mainstream the DublinPrinciples in national RWSS programs and policies.The Project is also innovative for the Government Indo-nesia, where a tradition of strong, centralized manage-ment had previously inhibited demand driven ap-proaches. These policies are now changing rapidly, andWSSPLIC fits well with new efforts to decentralize gov-ernance and alleviate poverty. It features an adaptiveproject design which allows for real-time changes instrategy and processes in response to feedback fromstakeholders and project performance.WSSPLIC project design andimplementationThe project is providing safe, adequate, reliable and easilyaccessible water supply and sanitation services to unservedor under served rural villages, and some communitiesaround densely populated centres. In addition, it featuresa program for participatory hygiene and sanitation edu-cation. The project targets low income groups byprioritizing villages that have been classified as poor byqualifying for the Government’s “Left behind Villages”Program (INPRES Desa Tertinggal, or IDT), a part of thenational poverty alleviation campaign.The institutional arrangements for WSSPLIC are rathercomplex. The Project is led by the Ministry of Health,within which the Central Project Secretariat (CPS) islocated. The CPS comprises technical staff from the Direc-torate for Human Settlements in the Ministry of PublicWorks, and the Directorates for Community Develop-ment and Regional Development in the Ministry of HomeAffairs. The National Development Planning Board(BAPPENAS) played a strong coordinating and advisoryrole during the design and early implementation phase,and continues to oversee the annual budget planningprocess as a part of its national mandate. The centralstructure is reflected at the provincial and district levels.Technical assistance from Indonesian NGOs and pri-vate engineering consulting firms have played a key rolein both project design and implementation. District-levelproject staff are each assisted by teams comprising a mixof community development advisers and engineers whohelp train and facilitate communities to plan and manageWSS systems.WSSPLIC facts at a glanceStart date: Oct. 1993Duration: 5 yearsLocation: Eastern Indonesia (6 provinces)Coverage: Approx. 1400 villages, 2 million peopleAn innovative RWSS project targeting poor communities and featuringa demand-driven approach, an adaptive project design, and extensiveNGO/Govt. collaboration.Objectives are:• To provide safe, adequate and easily accessible WSS services;• Support hygiene/health education to improve hygiene practices• Poverty alleviationPLENARY SESSIONS: POLLARD16Project implementation is founded on a set of simplerules governing demand responsiveness of the projectand costs. These are:• Communities must prepare Village Action Plans (VAPs)to be eligible to participate in the project. These plans,developed with the assistance of Field Officers, de-scribe the type and level of service to be provided andthe financial, labour, and managerial commitments ofthe community, Government agents, and contractors;• Village Water and Sanitation Committees must be estab-lished to manage community level planning, imple-mentation and operation & maintenance;• Budget ceilings must be established for subsidies tocapital costs. This is reviewed jointly by the WorldBank and Govt, each year, and is presently set at anaverage of approximately US$30,000 per village, whichis sufficient to provide a basic level of service in ruralcommunities;• Communities must contribute to both capital and recurrentcosts. The minimum contribution is 4 percent of capitalcosts in cash and 16 percent in kind, and 100 percent ofO&M costs.The construction of all physical works is driven by theinformed choice of communities as expressed the VillageAction Plans. Although “imperfect tools” at the outset ofthe project, they have become progressively more effec-tive instruments for defining community service leveldemands and locals takeholder responsibilities.Developing and applying the rules was not a simpletask. During the design phase, much debate revolvedaround the ability of low income communities to contrib-ute to capital costs. The benefits of requiring the contribu-tion was also debated. A great deal of debate occurredduring the first years of the project that led to somemodifications of the parameters of the rules to address theneeds and concerns of all stakeholders, but fundamen-tally they remained the same.The application of these rules has had several impor-tant benefits. The process of “informed choice” throughthe VAPs and subsequent cash contributions for con-struction has led to a strong sense of ownership andresponsibility in most WSSPLIC villages. Communitiesare now aware not only of their own responsibilities butalso those of the government agencies, NGOs, and con-tractors. They are thus better able to monitor contractdelivery and ensure that acceptable materials and serv-ices are provided.Initially, project implementation was very slow due inpart to the innovative nature of many aspects of theproject and the learning required for many stakeholders.In the first two years of the project there were long delaysin contract processing, community involvement in VAPpreparation and in subsequent construction was less thanplanned, per capita costs were relatively high, and con-struction quality was very variable. As knowledge andexperience was gained through training and implemen-tation,  improvement became rapid. Most water systemsnow are being built for less than US$25 per capita, VAPsaccurately reflect community needs and commitments,and construction quality in most new villages meetsproject standards.The learning processThe process of systematic learning has been instrumentalin identifying, analyzing and documenting the causes ofproject successes and constraints, and then guiding adap-tation of the project strategy in response. To drive theadaptive process, more intensive field supervision, casestudies of project “outliers” (very good and very poorlyperforming areas and elements), and an annual monitor-ing protocol are being carried out by project staff supple-mented by independent consultants. The UNDP/WorldBank Water and Sanitation Program has played an im-portant role in developing and guiding the systematiclearning process. A variety of indicators are monitoredthrough these mechanisms. Indicators of project processeffectiveness include: the quality of VAPs; records ofcommunity cash and in-kind contributions; contractprocessing time; contract performance, and the timeli-ness, appropriateness, and impact of training. Outputindicators are:• cost per capita of completed systems• construction quality• community capacity and responsiveness for under-taking or financing system maintenance,•  health impacts.WSSPLIC has thus far provided a host of lessons to helpguide the design of future projects and sector policies inIndonesia. Some of these are outlined below:• Communication and consensus are key to making theproject work. At the outset, not all stakeholders ingovernment understood or agreed with the projectrules or how they were to be applied. A protractedprocess of dialogue and negotiation has led to a viableand effective set of operating rules that all stakeholdersare comfortable with.• If the “gatekeepers” understand and buy into theproject, others will follow. A key event in WSSPLICwas the introduction of annual conferences for Dis-trict Commissioners (Bupatis) to apprise them of projectprogress and rules. This has led to enhanced supportfrom the Bupatis and has introduced an element ofcompetition between them to see the project performwell.• Communities need to have a voice in the technicalplanning as well as in financing, implementation, andoperations and maintenance. Without this, designerslose the opportunity to make use of local knowledge,and systems may not provide the level of service thatpeople want and are willing to pay for.PLENARY SESSIONS: POLLARD17• Responsibility for construction management shouldbe the lowest appropriate level - usually the villagelevel. Systems that are built through community “self-help”, when properly supervised by technical staff,tend to be better constructed, better maintained, andcheaper than contractor-built facilities.• Keep procurement rules simple and transparent by- minimizing the number of contracts- ensuring that procurement rules are understoodthrough careful training at the outset of the project- maximize the use of community skills and re-sources to reduce the need for contractors.• NGOs need to learn too. Working with large scalegovernment projects involve new operating rules andskills that NGOs may need orientation or training todevelop to perform effectively.• A multi-agency approach is relatively complex andtakes time and persistence to get in working order, butit yields better results than a single agency strategywhen high levels of beneficiary participation are re-quired. A variety of engineering and social scienceskills are required to support community-based ap-proaches that no single agency can provide.• Have patience. Institutional change is a complex proc-ess that takes time and nurturing before results can beseen.ReferencesStaf Appraisal Report No. 11777-INS: Water Supply andSanitation for Low Income Communities Project. (TheWorld Bank, May 26, 1993)Evaluation of WSSLIC Batch One Implementation(WSSLIC Central Project Secretariat, February 15, 1996).A New Project Cycle For The World Bank? In Financeand Development, December 1994 (Piccioto, Robert).Water Supply, Sanitation, and Environmental Sustain-ability: The Financing Challenge. The World Bank,Directions in Development Series (Serageldin, Ismail,1994).1 The four key principles enunciated at the Dublin Con-ference are:• Effective management of water resources demands aholistic approach linking social and economic develop-ment with protection of natural ecosystems;• Water has an economic value in all its competing usesand should be recognized as an economic good;• Water development and management should be basedon a participatory approach, involving users, planners,and policy makers at all levels, with decisions taken at thelowest appropriate level; and• Women play a central part in providing, managing andsafeguarding water, and therefore they should partici-pate in decisions effecting water use.

The people's choice: community management of RWS

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The people's choice: community management of RWS

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