Patrick Moriarty, Director of the IRC Triple-S Project, describes how WASHCost and Triple-S contribute to change processes in rural water and sanitation service delivery.
Published on: 26/01/2012
Patrick Moriarty has become head of the IRC international programme and Director of the Triple-S Project – Sustainable Services at Scale as of 1 January 2012. He moves from Ghana where he has been running the IRC West Africa Programme for the past four years, including the WASHCost and Triple-S projects. He says that it takes a minimum of three to five years of consistent work within countries to see real changes in the way that services are planned and delivered.
In Ghana and other countries skills and knowledge were being developed which would bring long-term benefits, particularly where the Triple-S project gave more time for changes to become embedded. “In my experience and not just from these projects it takes an absolute minimum of three years to begin getting some sort of traction at the very top of the system and maybe with a handful of people working in a district or on a pilot. I think to make any sort of significant difference at the scale of a nation you are probably talking an absolute minimum of five years if everything goes extremely well.”
However, he said that Ghana would benefit from support from Triple-S for a further two years. “I am very confident that by 2014 we will see real and measurable change”.
