IRC and CINARA to assess impact of post-construction support on rural water supply services in Colombia

Last month, IRC and CINARA started off with a study to assess the impact of post-construction support on rural water supply services in Colombia. In 2010, CINARA and IRC studied different support modalities to community-based water supply providers in the departments of Valle del Cauca and Caldas. Based on the results, a follow up study will be done in these two departments to quantify the effectiveness and efficiency of these support modalities.

IRC and CINARA have been approached by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to carry out this work. IDB actively supports the national government of Colombia in increasing water and sanitation services coverage in rural communities and marginalized urban areas. Addressing the issue of sustainability is key in this support and IDB sees post-construction support as a key instrument to assure sustainability.

The study will map out the current status of the quality of service provision in forty water systems in the two departments, as well as the governance and performance of the service providers. A set of sustainability indicators for measuring the quality of WASH service provision, as well as the governance and performance of the service providers will then be developed. The study will follow a similar approach as applied by the Triple-S project in Ghana, but will be adjusted to the context of rural water supply in Colombia. Indicators will also be developed to qualify the performance of the different post-construction support mechanisms. Overall, the study will present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the relation between support modalities, governance, performance of service providers and quality of services. The impact assessment is projected to be completed by the end of 2011.