A small village in Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan is working to strengthen citizens’ engagement for the provision of water supply through Water User Committee
The provision of drinking water supply has often been marred by multiple problems in remote rural villages in Pakistan. Most of these issues also pertain to absence of citizen engagement in rural water supply delivery. The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) is responsible for development, management, maintenance and monitoring the existing and new schemes at the district level in KP.
A small village in the north east of Abbottabad, Bagh Bandi, is working to strengthen citizens’ engagement for the provision of water supply through Water User Committee (WUC), a community model for managing rural water supply schemes. This water committee is mandated to work closely with both users and facility staff to overcome issues hindering smooth functioning of supply schemes.
This committee also aims to bring about a change in the approach towards solving issues at the local level and encourage the community to play an active role in creating ownership, eliminating illegal water connections, and enhancing revenue through tariff collection.
The village in Abbottabad got the water scheme approved by the water committee and the community at large. PHED procured the services of a contractor to complete the installation work. Some of the executive members of the water committee read the news published in the local newspaper in which contractor thanked the local PHED officials for extending support and cooperation.
One of the executive members apprised the members about the recently enacted KP RTI Act 2013 and proposed to seek information from the local PHED officials on the approved scheme. A resolution demanding information on the work order, budget, scheme design and specifications were drafted and passed unanimously by the water committee. In response, Executive Engineer (XEN) PHED furnished the information to the community upon its request. While scrutinising the documents, water committee found irregularities in the actual installation work. This clearly depicts mismanagement and corruption in development and maintenance of rural drinking water supply schemes.
Information helps citizens make informed choices and decisions. So did the water committee, and decided to take up this matter to the XEN for corrective actions, but it was turned down by the local PHED staff.
The members then decided to approach the Divisional Commissioner-Hazara to intervene. The commissioner directed District Monitoring Officer (DMO) to investigate the matter and report back to him for further action.The DMO made field visits and apprised the commissioner about the severity of the matter, who constituted a committee comprising PHED staff, contractor and water committee members. After 7 days, the committee submitted its report and found irregularities in the construction work.
The commissioner advised the local PHED staff to act upon the recommendations of the investigation report and immediately order the contractor to comply with the actual scheme design and specification.
Now, the community is in close contact with local PHED staff and contractor to fully comply with the design. This has brought unprecedented results in increasing the government responsiveness towards community action. Now, the community is accessing the water supply from government maintained supply scheme.
This activism by RTI and citizen to hold accountability of the local PHED staff is a good start to a long journey of good governance in public service delivery system.
Abridged version
For full version visit the link : http://tns.thenews.com.pk/out-of-reach-no-more