The South Tarawa Sanitation Project has made significant progress since late last year, with new PMU team members and engineers evaluating options and the feasibility of delivering the program objectives, supported by international advisors and the World Bank team.
In September, a comprehensive Mid-Term Review mission was held with all government stakeholders and the World Bank team. This MTR is critical for the WB to fully assess progress, the probability of achieving overall project objectives, and the capacity of the PMU/Advisors and the government to deliver on time and within budget.
Extracts from the mission report, follow:
“Achievement of Development Objectives, Implementation Progress, and Risks. The MTR assessment found that the project is currently behind schedule to meet the PDO as originally articulated though the objectives remain largely achievable within the project implementation period. The assessments completed during the preparation of the project did not fully capture the current state of the sewer network in South Tarawa and costs have escalated significantly since that time. In sync with this unprecedented critical network challenge, the reformulation of the core problem statement is perceived as pragmatically logical and essential. At MTR, the main problem statement is that South Tarawa’s population faces non-functional sewer networks, limited onsite facilities, and low rates of access to safely managed sanitation services. Moreover, South Tarawa’s sanitation sector has limited institutional capacity, underdeveloped systems and funding, which constrain sustainable delivery of services. Consequently, the GoK is requesting to revise the PDO of the project and adjust relevant project targets. The project PDO will be revised to read “To scale up access to safely managed sanitation services in selected areas of South Tarawa and to strengthen targeted sector institutions.” This change reflects the GoK ambition to move from improved sanitation to safely managed sanitation services, which will also give greater attention to the functionality of the sewer network, fecal sludge management services and the ocean outfalls. STSP was found to be strategically relevant and coherent with the GoK overall policy direction, and consistent with the KV20, National Development Plan, National Sanitation and WASH Policies. This is in addition to alignment with the Sanitation Addendum and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 priorities.
Implementation has been significantly delayed due to challenges recruiting the experts for the PMU and the associated Project Implementation Assistance Consultancy (PIAC). Now that the core PMU team and PIAC are in place, the mission noted that implementation progress has been improving.
The MTR did not identify any significant new risks to the project but confirmed that there are continued risks linked to procurement (including challenges attracting international bidders and limited capacity in the national market), risks linked to PMU and MISE staffing (with continued risks of high turnover of key staff/consultants), potential construction challenges linked to challenges for households to obtain land tenure documentation, and sustainability
risks for ongoing operation and maintenance of new infrastructure linked to PUB’s financial constraints. The mission noted that PUB has made meaningful progress on its internal structure and systems though the utility remains vulnerable and continued support will be critical. The mission proposed a number of measures to help address these challenges, as further detailed below, including recruiting a dedicated procurement specialist to the PMU, putting in place Hands-on Expanded Implementation Support (HEIS) for procurement, accompanying households to obtain necessary tenure documentation, and supporting PUB capacity building alongside a tariff study to support long-term sustainability of services.”
PUB remains committed to support our colleagues at the PMU and MISE, to ensure that we deliver a improvements to South Tarawa sanitation services. PUB will benefit from new equipment procured through the project and will assist in a major cleaning of the existing sewer network that will start very soon and as a prerequisite for new connections, planned under the project to be implemented next year.
0 Comments