Coherence and harmonisation

Improved operational documents for increased coherence and harmonisation

Triple-S, together with CWSA is looking into improving the operational documents, so that they will serve the needs of all sector stakeholders. Currently a project implementation manual implementation is being developed and guidelines are being looked into. ‘We believe that once we have this and have common agreements, as a sector we can have some coherence in how water service is delivered’. This coherence is not fully there at the moment. According to Vida, it has occurred that projects implemented by donors and NGOs were more based on what they thought should be, rather than based on a national framework or national set standards. The operational documents can be taken as reference points to which the sector has agreed upon and will enhance the role of CWSA as the regulator for the sector.
In the process towards coherence and harmonisation there will be some negotiable things and some non-negotiable things, such as:

• water quality: it should be a requirement that if you want to provide water service, you ensure that the quality is good;
• issues around the technology: government has agreed on standards and identified a number of technologies to use.
• geographical distance: we need standards as to number of persons per borehole, to ensure equity. This can also help to manage issues around time that people spend in fetching water;, around crowding and around the pressure on the facility itself

Consistency at district level
Once the operational documents are ready, they will be tested out in the pilot districts in order to see if the non-negotiables are the right ones. Triple-S focuses on coordination issues, coordination in terms of meeting the standards for providing water services and coordination in terms of how plans are prepared, all to avoid that projects are being done outside the district assembly plan. Another focus are is the coordination of the monitoring, so that functionality of all the systems is being monitored, irrespective of whoever provided the facility.