Rural Water Supply and Sanitation

PROJECT COMPONENTS

The original project had three major components: Strengthening the capacity of national and local government for service delivery; providing safe water and sanitation facilities to the unserved population of Afghanistan; and implementing sectoral studies.

1) Strengthening and capacity building of government agencies, NGOs, private sector, and the communities: This component included technical assistance (TA), the establishment and financing of the recurrent costs (on a declining scale) of the project implementation unit (PIU), monitoring and evaluation (M&E), Management Information System (MIS) and training to enhance the capacity of:  (a) MRRD to develop national rural water supply and sanitation sector plans; implement sector policies and strategies; monitor and evaluate the sector; carry out more effective sector coordination and facilitate sector development; and streamline effective and efficient approaches to service delivery; (b) NGOs to assist communities to create awareness regarding health, hygiene, and sanitation education; community mobilization; (c) private sector to assist the communities to construct rural water supply and sanitation facilities; and (d) communities to take charge of their water supply and sanitation facilities and assume full O&M responsibility.

2) Selection and construction of water points and construction of sanitary latrines including the provision of community-level health and hygiene education: The component included (a) the software aspects of the project which comprise social mobilization, capacity building, awareness-creation, training, and supervision of construction activities; (b) the hardware aspects, which consist of construction of approximately 950 water points with hand pumps, approximately 15 gravity flow piped schemes with stand posts; protection and rehabilitation of springs and existing water points, and construction of 3 demonstration latrines per water point constructed; creation of demand for, and construction of, sanitary latrines in each of the participating households as well as development of an O&M plan; and (c) community-based O&M system based on existing good practices in Afghanistan.

3) Studies: This component comprised funding various studies that would help identify appropriate approaches to deliver safe drinking water and sanitary latrines; develop a strategy for carrying out an effective national campaign for health and hygiene education as well as develop measures to regularly monitor water quality. The studies would include: (a) Assessment of design parameters for service delivery to small rural towns; (b) Assessment of service delivery options for Kuchis (nomads) by consultants with long experience in working with Afghan nomads, preferably pre-war, to ensure sufficient insight into nomad lifestyle; (c) Study to determine a strategy for a national health, hygiene, and sanitation campaign, including the most effective means of developing coordination among different government line ministries and other stakeholders, including piloting the strategy; (d) Study, cognizant of regional experiences, to develop feasible sanitation strategy/ approaches appropriate to Afghanistan to expeditiously expand coverage, including a pilot program; (e) Water quality monitoring; and (f) Surveys and studies leading to appropriate technology and sector development.

PROJECT RESULTS

• 34% Percent increase in number of households with improved access to water points;
• 98% Percent increase in number of households with improved access to hygienic sanitation facilities;
• 59, 384 Households reached with household women as targets for Hygiene Education linking water and diarrhea;
• 55% increase in hand washing with soap at critical junctures; 297 CDCs and 13 water user groups formed/ involved in project planning and implementation;
• MRRD's capacity to manage contracts improved significantly from Original Grant Project to Additional Grant project;
• 35 Works contracts in Additional Grant Project were completed in 16 months compared to 43 contracts in Original Grant Project in 33 months;
• 1,180 Water Points, 10 piped schemes and 4,017 Latrines completed.