The Northern Regional office of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) is taking steps to update data on functionality and sustainability of water facilities in the region.
Published on: 22/11/2012
The Regional office with supported from UNICEF Ghana is conducting baseline data collection in ten districts in the region. When completed, this will increase the number of districts with a comprehensive and an updated baseline on functionality, service levels, and performance of service authority and providers to 11.
The initial baseline data was first conducted by the East Gonja District with support from the Triple-S Project and the Northern Regional office of CWSA.
Monitoring of service delivery and functionality is practically non-existent in the Ghanaian rural water sub sector. Monitoring is also focused on coverage with less emphasis on functionality, service levels and the performance of the service authority and providers which is required to ascertain levels of services to enable corrective actions to be taken by district assemblies
The exercise is an attempt to streamline the conduct of data collection on rural water service delivery services, in the region.
The Triple-S Project working through the Community Water and Sanitation Agency has developed indicators for monitoring rural water service delivery based on national standards, norms and guidelines. These indicators have been tested in the East Gonja District, one of the pilot districts of the project in Ghana, through a rigorous data collection process which covered all water facilities and service providers.
Under the data collection exercise, the use of mobile phone technology, the Field Level Operations Watch (FLOW) application was tested. Analysis of the data collected on the indicators was undertaken and has resulted among others in the: identification of gaps in compliance of service levels, service providers and support functions at the district level; development of district plans for addressing the gaps; provision of a framework for monitoring water services; and improvement in reliability of data on water services in the East Gonja district.
Based on the lessons and experiences from the pilot of the functionality and service monitoring in the East Gonja District, CWSA Northern Regional Office engaged many of its key partners to seek support to scale – up to other districts in the region.
Consequently, a proposal based on the results and process of the service monitoring in East Gonja was submitted by CWSA to UNICEF to scale up in 10 additional districts of the Northern Region. These districts are: Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Savelugu-Nanton, Central Gonja, Gushiegu, Karaga, Kpandai, Tolon-Kumbungu, Yendi and Zabzugu -Tatale.
So far, UNICEF has provided financial support to CWSA Northern regional office for the scale-up and implementation in the 10 districts. The project which started in September 2012 will end January 2013.
CWSA in Northern Region have also held discussions on the replication of service monitoring in other districts with the Northern Region Small Town Water Supply Project (NORST) Project and the Northern Region Portfolio Office of SNV, key partners in the rural water sector in the region. The two organisations have shown interest in supporting the scale-up in other districts not covered by Triple-S and UNICEF in the region.
It is expected the lessons from the pilot and the scale-up efforts in the Northern region led by CWSA with support from its partners would feed into the development of a national framework for monitoring functionality and water services.
In addition, the scale-up efforts in the Northern region would provide further evidence and basis for the review of the DiMES to incorporate indicators for assessing service delivery.
Lamisi Dabire, November 22, 2012
