South Tarawa Water Supply Project (STWSP) and South Tarawa Sanitation Project (STSP)

The Kiribati Utilities Reform Program is an institutional strengthening program to benefit PUB, MISE, Kiritimati Island and other agencies. The program commenced in 2022 for 5 years. KURP continues to make good progress with its six pillars of institutional support. PUB’s Information Management System is now operational for accounting, transactional recording and financial reporting. The budget module is available, and PUB will engage HoDs to have input into departmental budgets for 2025. The fixed asset module is also operational, and the payroll is now conducted via the IMS MyPay module. Progress is being made on the interface between the Telstream billing system and NetSuite and it is expected for this automation to be completed by September. Other upgrades to the Telstream billing system are ongoing including a move to the cloud and an upgrade to PUB’s overall systems security. The interactive with ANZ remains to be completed which will close the loop and allow payments to be made directly from the NetSuite system. The inventory and projects modules are taking longer as these have wider implications for work orders, require additional users and user know-how and other procedures to be developed. This also links to the GIS system which is progressing well. The Human Resource Module is also successful with over 2,500 man-hours of training conducted and a range of technical and institutional skills being developed and strengthened, including skills in finance, project management, LV and HV cable-joining, GIS, Hydrogen mixing, O, H & S, network management, governance, drafting SOP’s and management.