ICMA and the newly established Afghan Urban Water Supply & Sanitation Company have signed an agreement to begin commercializing water supply departments in four provincial capitals with the goal of improving water quality, water availability, and customer service.
ICMA has signed a new $800,000 grant agreement with the Afghan Urban Water Supply & Sanitation Company (AUWSSC) for water infrastructure rehabilitation, equipment purchases, and staff incentive payments for the water supply departments of Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Gardez, and Ghazni.
The grant to the water supply departments is part of an $8.5 million, three-year Commercialization of Afghanistan Water and Sanitation Activity (CAWSA) program. This USAID-funded project, which is being implemented by ICMA, will help establish a viable business model for providing water supply and sanitation services to urban populations in these four provincial capitals.
The model is designed to help make the water departments self-sustaining by encouraging improved financial management and technical efficiency improvements. It is intended to recover all operating and maintenance costs without external government subsidies by 2014.
The agreement facilitates the establishment of performance targets, service expansion, and high-priority operational improvements that will deliver increasing quantities of clean, potable water to more customers during more hours per day, including 24-hour service to customers in many areas.
This program will bring the central government closer to its urban populations by strengthening the technical and managerial capacity of the provincial water supply departments. New management information systems and communications linkages among the regional utilities and their parent organization, the AUWSSC, will enhance monitoring and control systems at the national level. These systems will facilitate uniform, cost-effective improvements in water supply and sanitation service quality and availability, as this model is implemented in all urban centers.
ICMA has worked in Afghanistan since 2004, starting in Kabul and later expanding to work with municipalities in 11 provincial capitals and with water supply departments in four provincial capitals. For more information, see the Afghanistan section of the ICMA International Web site.