Although evidence reveals the substantial benefits of engaging the private sector, there are some particular challenges to its effective participation. These often arise out of using the formal private sector for tasks that are beyond its core competencies, and out of the difficulty of constructing effective interfaces between the stakeholders. Unlike small-scale providers, international and national private sector enterprises may not:
• have experience of and empathy with the poor;
• have staff who are skilled in working with poor, heterogeneous urban communities;
• feel comfortable with the divergent characteristics of municipal or civil society partners, and prefer instead to go it alone;
• appreciate the need for time to undertake participatory processes; or
• appreciate the social and cultural differences between international corporations and local settings, and between business and society.
In particular, the private sector often has difficulty with methodologies that involve poor householders and communities as decision-makers and participants. There is an underlying belief that 'business knows best'. With the right operator, and if approached creatively with support from other actors, these differences may be important sources of innovation.
Box 6.11 The Roles of an NGO in a Water and Sanitation Partnership | |
The mission of the Mvula Trust (see also Box 3.4) is to improve the health and welfare of poor and disadvantaged South Africans by increasing their access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation services. Its strategy is to support the development of good practice in the sector by testing and advocating sustainable models of cost-effective delivery and management. In 1997, Mvula Trust entered a consortium as the institutional and social development (ISD)-lead service provider for the build, operate, train and transfer (BoTT) contract for the delivery of water to poor peri-urban and rural villages in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The provision for this ISD role, termed 'organisational development', was included from the outset in the Terms of Reference (ToR) as one of the key roles in the partnership arrangement and delivery process. Under the BoTT arrangement, the ISD tasks for which Mvula Trust is responsible include: • Establishing sustainable community-based organisations. Community leadership is considered a critical dimension of the BoTT approach. This task area is aimed at establishing effective communication channels between the community, the municipality and service providers. It is achieved through the structuring and organisation of a project steering committee and village water committee, and by working with local government to ensure that communication between community organisations and the council are established and effective. Mvula Trust appoints specialist community workers to adapt participatory methods with each individual community to enhance existing organisations and to facilitate decision-making regarding services. • Facilitating agreements and cost recovery mechanisms. The ToR for the ISD services links the establishment of effective CBOs to the customer service agreements that are necessary for the works to proceed. ISD workers are responsible for working with communities to explain proposals, make revisions and ultimately sign off the customer agreement. The ISD provider is also responsible for building awareness in cost recovery. This area of work involves liaison with the community to establish agreement on overall costs and the development of options with the community for the payment of tariffs. Mvula Trust is also charged with the identification of poor households unable to afford tariffs, and with setting recommendations for how tariffs will be covered to ensure that they are included in the benefits of the improved service. • Providing health and hygiene promotion. Utilising participatory methods, and starting with an analysis of existing health patterns, baselines, identification of primary health problems and health-related behavioural changes, the health promotion activities are developed around one key behaviour that undermines health in the community. The work thus includes identification, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Indicators are framed in terms of increased knowledge of health and hygiene issues within the communities. • Undertaking monitoring and evaluation. This programme aims to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of BoTT activities in each community during the operation and maintenance phase of the works. Utilising participatory methods, the ISD team identify problem areas related to the water supply scheme and suggest solutions and recommendations for refurbishment. • Developing the water service provider role. The development of a water service provider (WSP) as a long-term organisation to operate the water system is the primary mechanism for the delivery of service improvements. The ISD team plays a key role in establishing the development of the WSP and the institutionalisation of the WSP in the community. Allied to this is capacity building to ensure that the proposed WSP is able to carry out the role defined in the national regulatory framework. This includes, for instance, customer liaison, management and cost recovery. • Facilitating labour procurement. This component of the work aims to promote local employment through the procurement of labour from each community. The ISD provider role facilitates this process by strengthening the established CBOs (in this case the Project Steering Committee) to act as brokers in the procurement of manual labour for construction works, and by supporting the community in its liaison with the contractor. Communities are expected to form a labour desk and formulate business plans in accordance with BoTT procedures. Capacity building is provided to ensure that nominated labour desk members from the community are familiar with the tasks involved and the procedural limitations of the work. • Building local ownership. The contract provides for the hiring and training of previously disadvantaged individuals and companies to carry out the works, and for them to gradually gain share ownership in the management company. The Mvula experience of facilitating these ISD activities has been mixed. The emergence of disagreement within the partnership arrangement - especially where partners have not appreciated the importance and implications of community-based approaches - has created ongoing problems for Mvula in achieving the sustainability it places high on its agenda. | |
Source: Developed from RoSA, 2000b | |