Report: Integrated Water Resource Management Lake George Uganda

Objectives of the project: Operational objective: Sustainable improvement of the living conditions of the rural population through an improved access to drinking water and sanitation;Strategic objective: Stimulation of IWRM in the catchment area of Lake G

PROTOS has in partnership with JESE and FORUD been building 39 water points consisting of shallow wells and, protected springs. The implementation of this infrastructure has been done in a participatory approach with clear roles for the local communities (beneficiaries) and local authorities. Community authorities have been trained in tendering and external contractors were granted the works. The beneficiaries were trained to form representing water user committees in the initial phase of the projects in order to improve ownership.
Next to this main infrastructure component of the program PROTOS has integrated other water technologies in its program, being in a smaller scale and for different purposes (not only for human consumption). Good examples are the fish slabs on fishermen landing sites for allowing clean processing of the fish and building Ecosan latrines on public places like landing sites and market places.
Pilots have been done in building rainwater harvesting tanks at both institutional (school) and household level.
Related to hygiene and sanitation knowledge, a lot of effort has been done to create awareness and to sensitize the people in the intervention, using different methods :
- Supporting and equipping drama groups who are performing on H&S topics in the area
- Training the water user committees
- Perform household visits and build demo homes
- Train hygiene promoters and introduce PHAST sessions (Participatory Hygiene And Sanitation Transformation).
- Start school hygiene groups and health classes using C2C (Child to Child) approach
- …
The Hygiene and sanitation component of the program was also linked with the infrastructure component which is again on both institutional level (e.g. multi stance Ecosan in schools and public latrine on market) and household level (mainly household Ecosan toilets). The Ecosan technology has shown to be well accepted after the different sensitization and training being done and its different benefits are more and more understood (use of urine – composted fecal material as compost). Furthermore it was shown that on the landing sites where ground water tables are very high, this technology is the best fit. Even on the District level it was decided that for these areas it is “the” technology to be promoted (allowed) by all development partners.
Last but not least, PROTOS has played a prominent role in creating the first decentralized “Integrated water Resources Management” pilot project in Uganda. Several representatives of involved local district authorities and representatives of LAGBIMO ( Lake George Basin Integrated Management Organisation) were put together on the table with representatives of DWD Directorate of Water Development (body of central authorities Uganda) to form a Catchment Committee for the river Mpanga, the most important river of Lake George basin. They are working together on 4 issues/threaths for the river. It is the first decentralized IWRM Committee working in Uganda: it is closely followed by central authorities and promoted as the good practice case for other basin authorities starting activities.

The water user committees are collecting money from users as a water user fee has been agreed. In reality it shows that there are many challenges to collect this fee. A survey shows that the collected fees range from 0 USD/year up to 50 USD per year.
Therefore PROTOS started medio 2009 the formation of water user associations in order to group water users from different water points into one bigger group. From this group the income will be made available for microcredits. The project is established in collaboration with the District Water Office and the first results indicate indeed higher revenues. The long term effect is to be examined.
PROTOS is continuing his program in this intervention area and will further focus on the set up of these structures for sustainability of investments.

A lot effort has been done to introduce ecological sanitation (Ecosan) in the intervention zone. At first the technology showed different challenges but the experience in the field shows that different households have now seen the advantages and adopted the technology. This is due to a large effort on sensitization and promoting the advantages (e.g. manure production and protection against collapsing soils) as well as a process to find building options to largely reduce the cost (now a low cost Ecosan is rated at approx 70 – 100 USD).
During the course of the project high increase in the price of some materials has been observed (eg fuel, cement, ..): this has had an impact on the realization of infrastructure.
PROTOS has introduced formal tendering procedures where the local leaders, together with the members of the water users committee of the new water point are trained to tender out the work. The objective was to increase ownership of the target groups and to enforce the different roles of the stakeholders in the implementation process. In reality we see that the number of capable construction companies in these remote intervention areas are limited which results into the fact that the same contractors were often selected.

In general it has been experienced that public water and sanitation infrastructure show many challenges in their usage. These relate to vandalism on rain water tanks in schools (taps broken/stolen), latrines/Ecosan on markets and landing sites. Therefore in a later the 2ned project stage, priority has been given to household intervention. Some public infrastructure is still being provided such as school Ecosan toilets. This infrastructure has shown to be well used/maintained in this protected environment when the school has successfully installed hygiene groups (through C2C processes).
PROTOS april 13th 2010