Potable Water Management Programme (PWMP) in Upper Egypt Phase 2

The Government of Egypt (GoE) has made concrete efforts to enhance the overall performance of the freshwater and wastewater sector and to face the sector’s challenges of underinvestment, limited governance and inefficiency.

In the Aswan Water and Sanitation Company (AWSC), revenues from water and wastewater fees are not sufficient to cover running costs, let alone investment costs. As a result, water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure is often in a state of disrepair, leading to heavy leakage, inefficient pumping and degraded water quality.

In PWMP phase 2, the Swiss support targets two neighbourboods in Eastern Aswan: El Sail and El Zaydab (“El Sail” hereafter) located east of the highly hazardous and polluted Sail Drain and south of Khor Awada (target area of phase 1). On the one hand the collaboration with the AWSC will continue in order to institutionalize the initiated business processes and task forces and ensure a proper handover of the infrastructure in Khor Awada. On the other hand, new investments will be engaged for the rehabilitation of the water supply network of El Sail while ensuring the community engagement.  The 30,000 inhabitants of these poor neighborhoods face similar challenges as in terms of unequal access and non-reliable quality of water supply.

Direct:
Inhabitants of El Sail and El Zaydab neighborhoods in Aswan (around 30’000 inhabitants, corresponding to 14% of the Aswan city population and 3% of the Aswan Governorate population).

AWSC task force members (15-20)

Students, teachers, women and youth actively participating in the awareness campaigns in El Sail area (6,240 students out of which 50% are girls and 26 teachers out of which 50% are women; directly participating in the 13 environmental clubs). In addition to 8 female promoters and 8 male promoters reaching out to 1,400 and 840 individuals, respectively.

Indirect:
All customers of AWSC (621,000)
All AWSC staff (2,997)

Outcome 1: Potable water management and service provision at AWSC level is improved.

Outcome 2: Equal access to a reliable potable water supply system that meets the present and future demand for the inhabitants in the target areas is achieved.

Outcome 3: Efficient water use practices are established among the inhabitants of the target area.

Resultados previstos:  

OP 1: Task forces and business processes created in Phase 1 are institutionalised within AWSC and further improved.

OP2: AWSC cost side is analysed and optimised with a focus on leak detection and energy saving measures.

OP3: AWSC revenue side is analysed and optimised with the aid of an improved customer database.

OP4: Successful policies are consolidated and discussed for replication in other WWCs by means of a Policy Dialogue.

OP5: Water distribution network in Khor Awada tested and extended and rehabilitated in El Sail.

OP6: Water supply system in Khor Awada tested and enhanced to provide enough water with sufficient pressure in El Sail.

OP7: Awareness about and behaviour regarding hygiene, water and environmental issues is improved among school students in El Sail

OP8: Public campaigns contribute to increase awareness about and adoption of efficient water use among community members in El Sail.

OP9: Community groups and individuals are capacitated through trainings and supported to implement activities in El Sail.

OP10: Regular communication between community leaders, AWSC and PWMP team is established.

Resultados de las fases anteriores:  

The establishment of a Project Management Unit (PMU) and of three task forces within the Aswan Water and Sanitation Company (AWSC) improved its governance and performance. The Energy Efficiency task force focused on eliminating electricity penalties. As a result, AWSC succeeded in lowering the energy consumption from 2,431,515 KWh to 1,570,827 KWh. The non-revenue water task force focused on gathering data for tracking physical and commercial losses (District Metered Areas (DMA) + comprehensive subscribers’ surveys (CSS). As a result, AWSC created 8 DMAs and managed to know the number of illegal connections. Institutionalizing these task forces and business process involved is key in sustaining AWSC’s performance. The billing and collection task force focused on comparing the bills collected against households’ consumption. As a result, the collection rate increased from 77% to 79%.

The awareness campaigns reached out to 2,700 Khor Awada inhabitants (out of which 1,080 are women). This succeeded in convincing 1000 households with illegal connections to install water meters and subscribe with AWSC.

The results at the level of infrastructure will be measured once the pumping station and reservoir are tested out and operational (Q4 of 2022).

Decent Life Initiative and additional investments in water and waste water by GoE in Aswan.

Improved Water and Wastewater Services Programme (IWSP-II, SECO).

Local Development Program-for-Results Project (World Bank).

Egypt Utilities Management Project (USAID)