Support to Water Users and to Services for Farmer Water Users’ Communities Projet d’Appui aux Irrigants et aux Services aux Irrigants ASIrri MOWRAM/AFD Workshop: Moving Toward Sustainable Operation and Maintenance of Irrigation Schemes Phnom Penh, February 11, 2009

The Operation and Maintenance of irrigation schemes require FWUCs to undertake the following general functions: – Water management, –Maintenance of infrastructures, –Irrigation Service Fee collection, –Institutional and financial FWUC management

Skills required Looking into details, the proper implementation of these major functions requires a large variety of tasks and skills, such as: –Engineering, design, preparation of bidding documents, topography, etc. –Accounting, financial auditing, etc. –Information management, database –Legal advise

Internalization vs. Externalization of these specific functions Depending on the schemes size, different organizational options could be proposed: –Very small FWUC (village level) may not need a very professional organization, –Very large FWUC (e.g. Prey Nup) will choose the option of professionalization, with more salaried staff, and will be able to internalize more specific functions thanks to scale economies (e.g. Prey Nup PUC has its own accountant, manage a database of land owners and plots, has staff skilled to implement topography work, prepare bidding documents, or monitor works… but still need to externalize functions such as auditing). –In between: the limits between internalized and externalized functions have to be defined for each specific case.

Scale economy and external services (1) First option: shared resources between neighboring FWUCs: – A 1,000 to 3,000 ha scheme is already too big to be managed in an informal manner… but may be still too small for the FWUC to afford the cost of permanent professional staff. – Whenever 2 or 3 schemes are located in the same area, they may take benefit from sharing resources (e.g. one accountant, one technician, etc.)

Scale economy and external services (2) Second option: External services for more occasional needs – For functions that are not needed permanently, but occasionally, FWUCs could be able to hire services on demand. (for instance : financial audit, engineering services, works control, etc.)

Which service providers? Existing commercial service providers do not always provide ad hoc services and/or are not affordable for FWUCs. –e.g. An annual audit of accounting and finance, provided by a local certified accountant company, cost from 1,000 to 4,000 USD. PDOWRAM / FWUC department is mainly involved in the phase of creating FWUC, providing them with legal recognition and offering basic training in management. This intervention is limited in time and scope. >> There is room (and need) for the development of alternative service providers >> and to strengthen links between FWUCs and existing service providers

The main objective FWUCs can access services which are: –Good quality, professional services, –Adapted to their particular needs and to their stage of development, –Affordable, –Sustainable

The vision A Service Center is created and sustained, and can provide directly or indirectly affordable quality services through a pool of professionals, with a practical experience of irrigation management issues.

›The Service Center will build diagnostic tools to assess the specific needs of FWUCs adapted to their size and to their stage of development. ›The Service Center could be also an opportunity for projects and other stakeholders to exchange experiences and find resources to develop their own FWUCs management tools. Different demands

Institutional options What kind of institution this Service Center shall be? – Private (NGO like) – Private, driven by FWUCs (Federation…) – Mix (Public-Private) ( close collaboration with PDOWRAM) – Network: platform to improve connections and adequation of offer and demand between existing organizations It still has to be defined, also taking into account MOWRAM strategy for supporting FWUCs…

A three year project to initiate a dynamic… The initiative proposed by GRET and CEDAC and supported by AFD will allocate means to initiate the process, test the ideas and options, with in particular a pilot mechanism in Kampong Thom province.

… but a long term perspective Still, nowadays, very few FWUCs are ready… The ambition of adequate and sustainable services for irrigation is a long term challenge (10 – 15 years ?) related to the development of a large number of FWUCs able to finance some services But sustainability of services has to be though from now on, and the idea could be integrated in all intervention in the irrigation sector