Water Users Association and Irrigation Management - Institute for ...

Ahmad (2000) claimed that water scarcity, degradation of water and land and lack of funds
to maintain and develop irrigation and drainage systems are symptoms of deeper problems
of policy and institutional and market failure. Irrigation and drainage reforms should be
integrated in a way that ensures that the policies are technically sound, economically viable,
socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable. Drainage user associations should be
introduced to promote the participation of beneficiaries in subsurface-drain operation and
maintenance in coordination with WUAs.
Freisem & Scheumann (200 I) have examined the functioning of Collector User's
Associations (CUA) which takes up the O&M responsibility for subsurface drainage
schemes that were implemented on a small scale in Egypt to mitigate the problems of
salinity and waterlogging. There are about 2,881 CUAs where farmers are informally
organized for carrying out simple maintenance works in pipe collector drainage schemes.
Their command area comprises pipe collector schemes, which cover an area of between
100 and 300 ha. More complex maintenance work is realized by the Egyptian public
authority for drainage projects. However, the views on farmers' participation for O&M
alone of drainage infrastructure in Egypt are mixed. Croon (1997) is of the opinion that
farmers are, in general, aware of the necessity of drainage and they exert strong pressure on
the authorities to install subsurface drainage through an organization. He foresees no major
problems concerning the acceptance of farmers' organization for drainage system. Yet, van
Steenbergen (1997) considers that the establishment of farmers' organizations for drainage
system management would not receive a good response. The reason might be that it is more
difficult to establish farmers' organizations in already operating drainage systems. In
general, farmers' involvcment in drainage seems to be more feasible through irrigationbased
organizations than through single-purpose farmers' organizations for drainage.
It may be noted that only a few studies have dealt with farmers' participation m an
association for O&M of various infrastructure. Indeed, most research programs have only
recently recognized the importance of farmers' associations in collectively maintaining the
drainagc infrastructure or having a better bargaining power to negotiate with the agency to
provide services.
49