Commercialization of Afghanistan Water and Sanitation Activity

In November 2008, ICMA began work on the USAID and ICMA Commercialization of Afghanistan Water and Sanitation Activity (CAWSA) program, which is designed to develop a viable commercial business model for urban water and sanitation service delivery in Afghanistan.

CAWSA was awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kabul (USAID/Kabul). To carry it out, ICMA began working with local units of the national water utility (the Afghan Urban Water Supply and Sewerage Corporation, AUWSSC) in the cities of Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif, Ghazni, and Gardez to help them improve their management and technical operations.

The program was later expanded to include Kandahar and four water supply satellite operations in the smaller cities of Zaranj, Lashkar Gah, Mehtarlam, and Tirin Kot. In May 2012, when the program in the original cities ended, USAID extended the program in Kandahar for two years to allow time for it to "catch up."

The ultimate goal of CAWSA has been to prepare water utilities in the country for eventual privatization. To that end, the program has focused on:

Improving the operating efficiency of the local water utilities by implementing standardized work methods, inspections, inventory management, systematic equipment maintenance, and other practices that can help control costs
Improving financial management by revising revenue and rate structures, improving cash flow, and improving billing and collection practices—which, in combination with improved efficiency, can reduce the need for government subsidies
Reducing water loss by better metering of water flow and by conservation practices
Establishing key performance indicators, performance targets, and measurement methods that will provide a yardstick for maintaining acceptable standards of service at reasonable cost
Providing the managers and employees in local utilities with the capacity and tools to sustain improvements into the future and to replicate them in other cities after ICMA's involvement ends.

During the first year of the program, ICMA completed detailed assessments of each local utility to determine its baseline physical condition, financing, management capabilities, and other resources. ICMA worked closely with the local utility managers to tailor the program to the needs of each city and to a changing national environment.

Based on the initial assessments, ICMA deployed practical on-the-job training and technical assistance to meet local needs. ICMA has worked with the employees of each local utility to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of their financial and administrative reports and procedures, and has established key performance indicators, performance targets, and measurement methods. Ongoing formal training complements the on-the-job mentoring with such topics as water utility management, basic water works operation, water testing and quality control, water distribution, and conservation programs.

In order to facilitate the ongoing development of the local water utilities, ICMA established a Statement of Goals for each local water utility along with a Capital Project Grants program and a performance contract with incentives for achievement of goals. This program carried forward into the second and third years of the program to facilitate the establishment of performance targets, service expansion, and high-priority operational improvements that are delivering increasing quantities of clean, potable water to more customers during more hours per day, including 24-hour service to customers in many areas.

Programmatic successes since the start of the program have included the following:

Improvements in physical infrastructure have included rehabilitation of pump stations, extensions of pipe networks, and repair of dilapidated buildings and other damaged property.
CAWSA teams, with water supply department technical teams, have done GIS mapping of existing networks to guide maintenance.
Water supply departments have recruited interns to read meters, deliver bills, and enforce collection of delinquent accounts, resulting in increased revenues and conversion of illegal connections to official ones.
These improved collection practices have helped the water departments increase their cost coverage. Each department has more than achieved its target increase in cost recovery.
Departments have made tangible customer service improvements, including hotlines, customer care centers, relocation of inconvenient offices to provide “one-stop shopping,” better customer communications, and computerized complaint tracking and customer records systems, leading to a decrease in delinquencies by unhappy customers.
CAWSA has procured motorcycles and three-wheeled vehicles for field inspectors and technical repair crews. Elapsed time between an emergency call and the arrival of a repair crew with replacement parts has been reduced significantly.
CAWSA has trained water supply departments to prepare infrastructure project funding requests, including CAD software design preparation and budget planning, for submission to provincial planning committees and other donors for funding, resulting in significant leveraging of additional investment resources.
CAWSA developed a technical operations and maintenance manual to help standardize AUWSSC infrastructure, operations, reporting systems, and maintenance activities for all of its local water supply departments countrywide. The manual is customized to the equipment in each water supply department and is available in English, Dari, and Pashtu. It is issued in loose-leaf binder format so it can be easily updated with new material.
AUWSSC, with CAWSA assistance, has developed annual corporate financial reporting based on actual performance of its network; improved communications with water supply departments; and received both organizational development assistance and financial advice to finalize its plans to integrate all CAWSA-assisted water supply departments and their satellites into the corporate holding company structure and resolve longstanding auditing and financial problems.

These and other "success stories" are collected in an area of the USAID website devoted to CAWSA. The following PowerPoint presentation provides a photographic "before and after" record of these improvements.