Project News

The Project for Strengthening Water Management Transfer (SWMT Project) implemented a workshop on development of a Roadmap on Water Management Transfer (WMT) in Cairo on December 3, 2015.

The total number of participants was 64, including decision makers of relevant departments in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI), representatives of the Branch Canal Water Users' Association (BCWUA) in each of the three pilot sites, Japan Embassy and other technical cooperation projects.

The main objectives of the workshop were to present the draft Guideline which indicates Roles and Responsibilities of the relevant stakeholders and the draft Roadmap on WMT, which were developed by the Project, and to exchange opinions and get approval on those documents by the participants.

Up to now, the Project has been implementing several workshops to develop the Roadmap on WMT with decision makers of relevant departments in the MWRI and representatives of the BCWUAs in the three pilot sites including the one to exchange opinions about vision and basic policy of the nationwide WMT^[1].

Thereafter, several meetings were also held to exchange information and opinions about WMT with about 100 participants, who are district engineers and staff of Irrigation Advisory Service (IAS) from all over the country from May to June, 2015^[2].

In the beginning of this workshop, progress of the project activities, the draft Guideline and the Roadmap on WMT were presented by the Project.

The draft Guideline on WMT indicates main activities in Water Management (e.g. Operation, Maintenance and Rehabilitation of Irrigation Facilities, Development of Water Distribution Plan and Monitoring, Environmental Activities and Conflict Resolution) and divides them into concrete sub-activities to be transferred to the BCWUAs.

On the other hand, the draft Roadmap on WMT indicates process to achieve targets of the Guideline, categorizes BCWUAs into five groups according to their capacities and specifies the target number of BCWUAs in each of the five categories.

Additionally, the Roadmap designates the target number of staff to be in charge of the activities and the training plan on WMT for each region in the next 10 years, based on their basic strategies and activities on WMT and their current numbers of staff.

In other words, the draft Roadmap on WMT will be a policy not only for the Irrigation Advisory Service but also for all the other relevant sectors in the MWRI.

In the open discussion of the workshop, there were many comments on those two draft documents by the participants. One of major comments was that it is important to amend the law as urgently as possible to give the legal status to the BCWUAs, while another was related to concrete measures on water distribution in the branch canals by the BCWUAs.

About water distribution by the BCWUA members, it was very impressive to observe that the Project Counterparts were eagerly explaining about good results of the project activities to the other participants. For instance, Eng. Abd El-Monaim Safina, Director of Qotour District being in charge of Shubra Baloola, said "Although there was water shortage at the tail-end of the branch canal in Shubra Baloola at the beginning, the situation was much improved, while the number of illegal pumps and rice cultivation was decreased by a series of activities including water measurement, field surveys and meetings on the problems and trials of WMT."

Mr. Hamed El-Gazzar, Chairman of Shubra Baloola BCWUA also mentioned "The Project succeeded in removing the illegal pumps, while our BCWUA could construct single lifting points whose costs were covered by ourselves. This success story proves that BCWUAs can improve water distribution in their branch canals by themselves." As a result of the open discussion, the two draft documents were approved by all the participants.

From now to the end of the Project in March, 2016, we will get approval on the draft Guideline and Roadmap in the MWRI and the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) and prepare for the first year to implement the Roadmap.

Workshop on Development of Roadmap on WMT.

Workshop on Development of Roadmap on WMT.

Workshop on Development of Roadmap on WMT.

Workshop on Development of Roadmap on WMT.