CWSA KICK STARTS REGIONAL ENGAGEMENTS ON NEW COMMUNITY WATER SERVICES POLICY

(BY MRS. PAULINE ESTELLA PEBLA TAMBRO – CHIEF PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER, CWSA)

The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) has launched a series of programmes to educate stakeholders and the general public on the new Community Water Services Policy (CWSP) which has been developed as part of the Agency’s reform process.

To ensure adequate understanding of the new policy and this stage of the reform process by the staff of the Agency and sector stakeholders, the Chief Executive of the CWSA, Ing. Worlanyo K. Siabi, together with a team from the Head Office organized the maiden regional engagements with the CWSA Regional and Water Systems Management Staff in the Volta, Eastern and Central regions from the 22nd to the 26th of February, 2021. The team made presentations on the new CWSP, status, achievements and challenges of the Reform so far and two APPs internally developed by the Agency’s IT Team on Human Resource Management and Billing.

 

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

The Community water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), initiated policy reforms in the Rural Water and Sanitation Sub-sector in 2017, with the aim of changing the management of water supply services from the existing Community Management to professionalized management model. The change in policy was triggered by recommendations gathered from various Stakeholders engagements and available research findings in the sector which pointed to the fact that the Community Management Model has not been efficient enough to ensure sustainable management of water supply infrastructure which government and its development partners have committed huge investments into providing. The initial engagements based on a concept paper led to the development of a Framework for the Reform which was also presented to sector stakeholders for validation at the national and regional levels.

As part of the process, a cabinet memo was subsequently submitted to Cabinet by the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) for consideration for approval towards the amendment of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency Act, 1998 (Act 564) to transform the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) into a utility service organization, with focus on application of innovation and professional skills in the management of water systems to achieve sustainability. In November 2019, Cabinet gave its approval for the CWSA policy reforms. This paved the way for the next stage of the reform process which was the development of the new Community Water Services Policy (CWSP) based on which the amendment of the Act 564 will be made to transform the CWSA from a facilitating Agency to a new utility organization called the Community Water Services Authority (CWSA).

The Community Water Services Policy has been aligned with Government’s vision for the Sub-Sector as enshrined in the Water Sector Strategic Development Plan (WSSDP), expressed as ‘all people living in Ghana have access to adequate, safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable water services, and practice safe sanitation and hygiene’.The formulation of the CWSP is based on discussions held in multi-level workshops, and extensive consultations with key stakeholders at national, regional, district, sub-district and community levels in the Community Water Services Sub-sector.

The purpose of the CWSP is to provide policy measures and define the implementation arrangements required to support the achievement of the government’s vision for the sector as stated above. The policy also provides direction and guidance for water services provision and supports decision-makers and stakeholders in determining “how things are done” and “who does what”. Most importantly, the amendment of the current CWSA Act, Act 564, will be based on the CWSP.

Nine focal areas and strategic actions have been identified under the CWSP. These include; Access to Potable Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Finance, Public Private Partnership (PPP), Knowledge Management, Research and Innovation, Pro-poor Support, Climate Variability and Change, Sustainability of Water Services and Water Safety.

The new Community Water Services Authority (CWSA) when established, will be the lead Rural Water and Sanitation Sub-Sector Organisation. It will provide and manage safe water supply and related sanitation services to rural communities and small towns and will coordinate all actors and interventions in the sub-sector including NGOs and Private Sector water services providers.

 

𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝗪 𝐂𝗪𝐒𝐀 𝐀𝐒 𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝗪𝐒𝐏

When established, the functions of the new CWSA will include the following:

• Be the asset holder and manage all community water systems provided with public funds
• Set standards and guidelines for the delivery of water supply in rural communities and small towns.
• License private sector entities for commercial community water supply.
• Mobilise funding from public and private sources for community water services delivery and related sanitation programmes in rural communities and small towns.
• Encourage private sector participation in the provision of safe water supply and related sanitation.
• Promote PPP arrangements for the funding, construction and management of water systems.
• Coordinate data collection efforts and dissemination for planning and policy decisions.
• Create enabling environment for knowledge management and learning in the sub-sector.
• Provide support, in collaboration with MMDAs and NGOs to local private entities such as Area Mechanics, in handpump management and related sanitation services.
• Stock and distribute handpumps spare parts for point water systems

Attendance to the engagement was very encouraging and participants showed a lot of enthusiasm in the presentations as they sat through and listened keenly in all sessions. At the end of the engagements, the objective of ensuring adequate understanding of the new policy was achieved as participants asked very engaging questions and made concrete contributions towards improving the content of CWSP and the two APPs.

 

𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒

The following is a pictorial presentation on the maiden regional engagements in the Volta, Eastern and Central regions.