CWSA meet stakeholders on sustaining water service delivery: innovations and partnerships for scaling up

Published on: 25/06/2013

Introduction

The meeting was to provide CWSA and Triple-S the opportunity to present status of developing interventions on sustainable water services and measures of institutionalization. The presentations and discussions focused on  recent interventions like the Life Cycle Cost Approach (LCCA) and Asset Management, and the SMS Technology, regional learning platforms initiated by CWSA and how these learning platforms can be replicated in other regions. District experiences on monitoring of water services and how results from the studies are informing remedial actions to improve on water service delivery at the community level were also shared.

The CWSA perspectives on sustainability

 

Mr Emmanuel Gaze, Director of Technical Services, CWSA – who represented the CEO, said the CWSA in conjunction with the Triple-S project has initiated a number of innovations to help bring about sustainable water service delivery which includes the adoption of the Services Delivery Approach (SDA).  Mr Gaze said the Service Delivery Approach is made up of innovative planning processes and products that would contribute to the realization of an indefinite sustainable water services delivery.

He said the discourse on the sustainability challenge is beginning to reflect in policy and practice, with the official adoption of the service Delivery Approach by CWSA. The Community Water and Sanitation Legislative Instrument, was passed in March, 2012 thus providing a legislative and administrative framework for ensuring SDA as the operating framework for the rural water sub-sector.

He entreated stakeholders to buy-in into the various concepts that the CWSA is bringing forth to ensure that their investments of time and other resources into the sector become meaningful and yields the desired results of providing sustainable water services to the populace.

CWSA/Triple-S interventions/Innovations

 

Tyhra Carolyn Kumasi, (PhD) Senior Research Officer of the Triple-S Project presented on some of the innovations that are being considered to ensure continuous service delivery.  These innovations included Life Cycle Cost Approach (LCCA), Sector Harmonisation & Alliance, Service Monitoring, Learning and SMS technology. The SMS Technology involves the use of text messaging to report of a broken down facility, the parts affected and ordering parts from a spare parts dealer.

Scaling up Activities

Some activities to be undertaken to ensure scaling up of service monitoring include the establishment of separate Field Level Operations Watch (FLOW) instance/Dashboard for CWSA, linked to District Monitoring and Evaluation Systems (DiMES), and revision of DiMES to incorporate fields for sustainability data and the development  of a how-to-do guide to aide in the processes.  The framework of sustainability indicators will be finalized and published as a tool for tracking water functionality and monitoring water services in the sub-sector.

Participants in the reflections meeting agreed that interventions that are successful and show sufficient results from the pilot should be up-scaled nationwide for the benefit of the whole sector. They believed that interventions need not to be perfected before up scaling since there could always be corrections during the implementation stages.

Already, UNICEF and SNV have collaborated with CWSA and Triple-S in the Northern region to undertake functionality and service monitoring study in 10 in the region.

It is the firm belief of the CWSA and Triple-S project that if these innovations are given the needed attention and support, they will contribute to ensure sustainable delivery of water services to the intended population, not for sometime but forever. 

Compiled by:

Victor Narteh Otum

DCO -IRC Ghana

June 24, 2013