Published on: 02/12/2013
Sustainable water service delivery requires systematic long term investments in capital maintenance expenditure and direct support cost to maintain and improve service levels. However, a cursory look at District Water and Sanitation Plans (DWSP) and Medium Term Development Plans of District Assemblies shows that these plans largely cover only the cost of building new facilities and neglect of the full life cycle cost of providing services. The Triple-S initiative under the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), the governmental agency responsible for facilitating rural water and related sanitation services in Ghana, is therefore working to offer innovative solutions and generate field evidence to inform decision making for the adoption of a service delivery approach in the rural water sub-sector through action research, piloting and testing of innovations, and multi-stakeholder dialogue to facilitate sector change and reform.
A training workshop for key staff of selected District Assemblies and CWSA in Northern Region of Ghana four-day workshop (8-12 July) was organized by CWSA in collaboration with the Triple-S project in Tamale. This training workshop forms part of the CWSA and the Triple-S project effort to equip relevant sector stakeholders with pertinent skills and knowledge in Life Cycle Costing of water services to enable proper planning and budgeting for sustainable water service delivery at the district and community level.
The objectives of the workshop were to:
- Introduce selected staff of District Assemblies and CWSA to the Service Delivery Approach (SDA) and Life Cycle Costing framework for supporting the delivery of sustainable water services.
- Equip DA and CWSA staff with the requisite tools and skills to plan and budget holistically for water service provision at the district level.
Participants for the workshop included District Planning Officers, District Budget Officers, District Finance Officers, District Water and Sanitation Teams, Heads of Civil Society Organisations, District Water and Sanitation Engineers. They were drawn from the CWSA Northern regional office and 11 District Assemblies, part of the Triple-S pilot district East Gonja and 10 UNICEF I-WASH Project districts in the Northern Region.
The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Kwabena Nyarko of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) with support from Mr. Bismark D. Asare of University of Education, Winneba and Dr. Christelle Pezon of Triple-S, Burkina Faso.
Discussions by participants centred mainly on collection of cost data including lack of data on sanitation especially for the rural areas; lack of data due to the exit of Donors/NGOs who have fixed/installed a facility, and difficulties in reconciling local level data with and national level data. The ideal cost for operations and maintenance was also found to be of great concern and the inadequacy of the District’s Assemblies Common Fund from Government to District Assemblies in support of their operations.
Participants were generally of the view that the workshop was important, timely and very educative. Some accounting staff also revealed that they have been exposed to some critical budgeting lines required for providing sustainable water services in their districts which until then had been overlooked. Participants commended the facilitators for the participatory approach adopted for the workshop which helped in the development of the draft direct support budgets for their respective districts.
The Workshop recommended that Civil Service Organizations should proactively engage the District Assemblies and service providers to demand for improvements in water service levels. It was recommended that innovative sources of funding for direct support cost be explored to complement the traditional sources of funding.
The Regional Director of CWSA, Mr. Ofori McCarthy, in his closing remarks, noted that there is apparent fatigue from donors in providing funding for new facilities. He reminded participants of their role in protecting the existing facilities from fast deterioration. He said the best way forward in ensuring sustainability of service delivery was for stakeholders to intensify monitoring of systems and facilities.
The CWSA in collaboration with its partners as the Triple-S project will continue to build the capacities of stakeholders in the rural water sub-sector through workshops and other innovative interventions like those currently being piloted by the Triple-S project, all aimed at ensuring sustainable water service delivery. It is now the responsibility of the beneficiary individuals, institutions and organisations to put to use the knowledge acquired to ensure sustainable water service delivery.
Compiled by Victor Narteh Otum, DCO-IRC Ghana - December 2, 2013.
