INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT II - LIFE-IWRMII ...

4. PROBLEMS AND ISSUES
GENERAL
Several issues require attention by the project and MWRI, as follows:
1. It appears that some MWRI field staff believe that implementation of IWRM does not
have the support of MWRI top management. As a result, some MWRI field (a minority)
staff are not following through on activities that are critical to IWRM, which causes delays
and substandard outputs.
2. Full integration is not taking place in some areas. EPADP still retains responsibility for
larger drains and retains some staff and equipment. Drainage equipment that has been
transferred to the districts, especially the sub-surface drainage flushing machines, are totally
unusable in some cases and the districts do not have budget to repair them. Also, some
staff transferred from EPADP to the IWMDs would prefer to remain under EPADP and
since t not all drainage responsibilities have been transferred to the districts, they hold some
hope of transferring back to EPADP. This results in sub-standard performance of the
IWMD drainage staff in some cases.
3. Some of the newly formed IWMDs do not have adequate human and financial resources to
function properly.
4. Staff reassignments and other factors require ongoing refresher training and re-training in
some cases. The project will focus on this issue in the remaining life-of-project but a longterm
plan should be developed by MWRI.
The major issue that adversely impacted implementation progress revolves around the Ministry’s
Integrated Water Management Unit (Unit) that effectively contributed to the success of IWRM I.
Originally, the Unit was expected to take the lead and play a major role on behalf of MWRI in
implementing IWRM II. However, the project started work on January 25, 2009 but the
Implementation Letter funding the Unit was not signed by USAID until August of 2009. This led to
restricted input from the Unit during that eight-month period. Additionally, there was a change in
the Director of the Unit in March 2009, which resulted in a learning curve for the new Director. The
Unit made beneficial contributions to implementation from August 2009 until April 2010 when the
USAID funding was terminated. MWRI disbanded the Unit in September 2010 and its staff were
reassigned to other sectors in the Ministry. At IRG’s request, several of the IWMU staff were placed
on official leave without pay and subsequently hired by IWRM II, to continue the work of the former
IWMU. Though this move allowed the project to continue implementing technical aspects of the
project, the critically important MWRI/IRG linkage provided by the full-time IWMU Director
has not been effectively compensated for to date. MWRI addressed this by assigning a part-time
Project Coordinator to re-establish that linkage but the workload associated with project
coordination is great and a part-time coordinator with limited part-time support cannot be as
effective as the Unit was. Additionally, there have been three different project coordinators in 2011
which has led to some loss of efficiency. The situation stabilized in August 2011 and project
performance has improved since then.
TASK 1.1: FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRANCH
CANAL WATER USER ASSOCIATIONS
No problems or issues to report.
ANNUAL REPORT YEAR 3 (JANUARY – DECEMBER 2011) 27