A community-based approach is also being promoted for irrigation, which entails the formation of water user associations. Drinking Water Supply The organization of the drinking water supply is different from that of agricultural advisory services because the authority for drinking water supply has been decentralized to the district assemblies. There is no dedicated line ministry in charge of drinking water. Rather, district water and sanitation teams (DWSTs) are formed in the district assembly to provide rural water. (Urban water supply continues to be provided by the Ghana Water Company Ltd.) DWST members are not specifically hired for this purpose; staff members of the district assembly who perform related functions, such as health, are designated to become members of the team. At the regional level, the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) was formed as a coordinating and facilitating agency but not as an implementing agency. The current approach to drinking water supply was introduced under the National Community Water and Sanitation Program, which was supported by the World Bank–funded Community Water and Sanitation Project I (1994–2000). The project aimed to establish a community-based or demanddriven approach, which (in principle) works as follows: Communities are expected to express a demand for drinking water facilities and form water and sanitation committees (WATSANs). Selected members of the beneficiary community serve on the WATSAN, which is in charge of one borehole. The WATSANs are expected to organize the community in the process of acquiring a borehole, which includes the collection of 5 percent of the capital cost of a borehole as a community contribution. The WATSANs are also responsible for maintaining the infrastructure. They are expected to collect regular fees from water users (on a volume or time basis) to cover maintenance costs. They are also supposed to organize collective cleaning of the surroundings of the borehole, and they are equipped to do minor repairs of the infrastructure. Maintenance requirements that are beyond the capacities of the WATSAN committee members are reported to the water and sanitation teams of the district assemblies. Under their procurement system, the district assemblies contract private sector organizations for the drilling of boreholes. District assemblies do not have dedicated field staff to work on water and sanitation issues; they are expected to hire NGOs or “partner organizations” to help communities form WATSANs. ETHIOPIA
This section provides background information about the third case-study country, Ethiopia. As in the previous cases, this section first provides an overview of the political system and the role of decentralization and then presents the
GENDER AND GOVERNANCE IN INDIA, GHANA, AND ETHIOPIA
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