Published on: 27/05/2013
In a growing number of countries, the responsibility for water and sanitation services has been decentralised to local government. Yet many studies point to chronic capacity problems across all areas of local government who then struggle to carry out even basic functions related to the provision of rural water services. Typical capacity problems include:
As a result, national authorities often place a low level of trust or confidence in local authorities and decentralisation efforts remain stalled. Whilst it is recognised that capacity support is critical to successful decentralisation, in practice, national decentralisation strategies have often not been backed up with adequate capacity development and resources to support the new responsibilities, resulting in a vicious circle of low capacity and service delivery failure.
Various approaches to improving capacity
A number of support modalities can be identified ranging from support from central government directly, to support contracted out from central government or horizontal support.
In order to address the capacity problems mentioned above, the following points are recommended as measures that should be integral to decentralisation efforts in the water and sanitation sector:
What is IRC doing about it?
IRC is working closely with local governments to develop plans and approaches for reaching everyone, forever. The local government is the central unit of effort in these plans. We also work with national governments to ensure that their decentralisation policies and strategies are realistic and provide adequate resources to local government to fulfil their role.