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Rural Water Supply Corruption in Ethiopia 171
Appropriate monitoring can be achieved by increasing of the number
of regional and zonal staff assigned to monitoring duties and by ensuring
they receive the training necessary to spot deliberate malpractice with
respect to short-drilling and use of substandard materials.
Recommendation 10: Strengthen community oversight and monitoring of
headwork construction in parallel with government supervision of drilling.
Finally, study findings suggest that community perceptions of construction
are determined largely by the quality of borehole headworks, at least
in those villages where communities have been actively involved in project
planning and management. However, perceptions alone do not provide
a robust indicator of corrupt practice in drilling—the part of
construction that is most vulnerable to corruption but that community
members know least about.
For this reason, we conclude that the potential for community oversight
of construction as a means of reducing corruption risk is limited but
that opportunities do exist for improving accountability in the design and
quality of headworks. The most effective way of achieving this is to
ensure that communities can make informed choices about the pump
they want and about any additional water uses (such as for livestock) that
need to be factored into final design.
It is good practice to ensure that communities have a say in the
design of surface headworks and, where feasible, in the siting of a borehole.
However, although community monitoring may improve project
outcomes, it is unlikely to affect corrupt drilling practices. Community
oversight of drilling is unrealistic; this should remain a government
responsibility.