Awareness Raising on MWRI Institutional Reform (IR) Vision | | North South Consultants Exchange

Awareness Raising on MWRI Institutional Reform (IR) Vision

Enhancing Awareness on Institutional Reform (IR) Vision/Strategy with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) and among key stakeholders

Description

The Institutional Reform Unit, established in 2002, completed the first phase of the MWRI Institutional Reform (IR) in 2005 which resulted in the development of a vision/strategy for the institutional reform of MWRI. The developed vision is the backbone of the MWRI local administrations restructuring from a centralized into a decentralized organization. The reform process has been divided in 8 strategies, listed below.

The MWRI IR Vision/Strategy has been guided by eight principles:

  • Participation: increased responsibility and authority of users
  • Decentralization: delegation of MWRI operational responsibilities to horizontally integrated local MWRI administrations
  • Basin organization: adoption of hydrological unit boundaries for management and administrative units wherever feasible.
  • Water quality: pollution control and prevention as an integrated dimension of water management.
  • Private sector participation: increasing the demand for private sector investment and services and facilitating their supply.
  • Privatization: divestiture, where feasible, of nonessential MWRI assets and activities.
  • Cost recovery: transfer of financial responsibility to users along with management responsibility, recovery of selected main system O&M costs, and partial recovery of selected local I&D improvement costs.
  • Interministerial coordination: establishment of National Water Council to ensure policy and program coordination, strengthen laws, and improve enforcement. 
See also: Capacity Building Project MWRI Institutional Reform (IR) Vision Implementation Plan

Water shortage, agriculture expansion and water pollution are the main challenges facing the water sector in Egypt. These challenges require mobilizing and managing all available resources in an integrated manner. MWRI is the sole entity responsible for the establishment and management of the water resources system and its networks (irrigation, drainage, and groundwater). Based on the above-mentioned challenges, MWRI recognized that an integrated approach for water resources management constitutes a crucial need at this stage to eliminate and face those challenges.

In this context, there is a need to mobilize the commitment and support of all MWRI staff and other stakeholders such as concerned ministries, public and private organizations in order to implement the Ministry IR since they are the implementers and partially beneficiaries. Current MWRI mid-level and junior staff will be the top management of the Ministry in the future and will be the prime actors in the implementation of the IR process. They will also be directly affected by the changes. Thus, there is a crucial need for them to be fully aware of the institutional reform concepts, process, and implications. This commitment can be achieved through awareness and consultation. The IRU plan of operation has five outputs, one of which is “involving MWRI and its development partners.” This output has a number of tasks to be achieved out of which is to “inform MWRI Mid-Level Staff on the IR.”

Services

The Institutional reform Unit (IRU) has requested NSCE to submit a proposal to conduct five awareness workshops as described in the ToR. The overall objective of the awareness workshops is to mobilize the commitment and support of MWRI mid-level and junior staff as well as other stakeholders to embrace IR Vision/Strategies and actively participate in the implementation process.

The specific objectives of the workshops are to:

  • Inform the participants about the Institutional Reform Vision/ Strategy,
  • Update the knowledge of the participants about IR Vision implementation plan,
  • Present in brief the Institutional Reform Unit plan of operation.
  • Reviewing all related materials to IR Vision/Strategy and its implementation plan.
  • Identification of type and density of information transferred to participants during IR Vision/Strategy development process (in collaboration with IRU).
  • Designing of workshop scenario and preparation of its materials and presentations.
  • Conducting five workshops in five regions (one for each region): East Delta, Middle Delta, West Delta, Middle Egypt and Upper Egypt and its reports.
  • Design impact monitoring system and conducting field monitoring visits to workshops participants to measure their level of awareness after certain period of the workshops implementation. In addition, to investigate level of awareness of sample of their colleagues who did not attend the workshops in order to measure level of influence and knowledge transfer for further recommendations?
  • Identification and formalizing conclusions on the workshops implementation, assessment of the participants level of awareness (before and after the workshops) and recommendations on further awareness activities and tools needed based on lessons learned during the implementation of the assignment.