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Published on: 27/05/2013

Why is it important for sustainable services at scale?

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:

  • Technical skills required to fulfill the new set of responsibilities,
  • Structural human resource weaknesses facing public administration in general
  • Broader institutional limitations shaped by patchy and limited funding mechanisms.

 

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.

  • Support from Central government is the most common arrangement. In Uganda Technical Support Units provide support to all Districts; in South Africa the decentralised offices of the Department of Water Affairs have set up ‘one stop shops’ to ensure Water Service Authorities have access to specialist expertise and meet performance targets.
  • Peer-support or “horizontal learning” is common in Honduras and Bolivia where municipalities join forcesto contract specific expertise.
  • Support contracted out from central government to specialised training centres.

Recommendations

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:

  • Long term funding is required  to provide capacity support to local government
  • Functions of all actors should be clarified following decentralisation process
  • Local government should be incentivised by linking performance to funding and tailored-made technical support.

 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. 

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