Water Institutional Reforms in Kyrgyzstan - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 116

Independence
Though formally independent, close relations between the WUA and formal as well as infor
mal local governance structures could be observed. In both WUAs, the respective director of
the agricultural cooperative that succeeded the FSK is the chairman of the WUA. At the WUA
“kd orset”, the WUA chairman is the former director of the FSK. Now he is director of the
agricultural cooperative, chairman of the local kenesh (municipal council), deputy to the district
council, and a close friend of the head of the a/o. Of the eleven deputies of the local kenesh ,
four also have a function in the WUA: Besides the previously mentioned chairman, also two
WUA council members as well as the WUA director are deputies of the kenesh . The chair of
the sud aksakalov (court of elders) is also a member of the WUA council. He worked 15 years as
leading agronomist and one year as leading economist in the sovkhoz . The WUA chairman and
he both say they have their position thanks to the respect they gained among the villagers in
Soviet times.
At the WUA “BChK Sovkhozniy”, the legacy of the FSK, in this case the UchKhoz , is also
evident: the director of UchKhoz is the chair of the WUA. The former director of the UchKhoz
is now the head of the aiyl okmotu, and the WUA director used to work as a hydro engineer at
the UchKhoz earlier. It was reported to be an unofficial rule that the head of the UchKhoz will be
the chairman of WUA. Farmers often believe that the WUA is a special department of the aiyl
okmotu. Sometimes they also connect it with the FSK or the RaiVodKhoz . Some can associate
persons with it, but hardly anybody knows the exact name or what “WUA” stands for. They
do not generally perceive it as “their” organization. This was also confirmed by the study of
Hassan et al. (2004: 36): “The WUAs are perceived as someone else's organizations, either of
the chairman or of the village.”Occasionally, the WUA establishment stems from the initiative
of the aiyl okmotu : At Frunze, the aiyl okmotu was busy setting up a WUA for the area of the
FSK “Frunze” at the time of field research. It was obviously the a/o's initiative and not the
farmers' one. The a/o had not only already determined the name of the WUA ( Frunzeyskiy ) but
also who would be the director. In Zhany Pakhta, the office of the WUA is situated in the a/o
building. This may contribute to the WUA being associated as part of aiyl okmotu administra
tion by villagers. Even a member of the local kenesh said that a special commission exists at the
aiyl okmotu to deal with water (meaning the WUA).
User Participation
One main aim of the WUA concept is raising community awareness and empowerment of the
rural population by introducing self responsibility for the management of their irrigation sys
tem, thereby raising ISF collection rates and efficient water use. Awareness about the meaning
of WUA among water users is low, however. Though the cases in which farmers do totally not
know about WUA are rare as are instances in which farmers exactly know what the WUA is.
People in general know that there is some organization responsible for water, if only because
someone comes to their homes to collect fees. However, farmers in general do not perceive
the WUA as an independent organization. Hence, they are also not aware of their participation
rights and mechanisms. The internal structure of WUA was adapted from government authori
ties with minimal functions of the members' meeting on the one hand, and a strong position of
the chairman and the director as an “executive” on the other hand. While the general assembly
meets once a year, the idea of the council is to meet more often, about every two months. It
was difficult to recreate how often the council actually meets. Questions to this end were
usually answered with “according to the requirements”. It seems that official meetings are