Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tion management reform process. A coherent legislative framework is lacking, as well as coor
dination of all these “experiments”.
In order to summarize and organize the multitude of uncoordinated activities, the current state
of local irrigation management can be classified into three types of organizations:
1)
Dekhkan
farms
In places without donor involvement, there are no efforts to implement irrigation reform.
In these places, local water management is now often task of the collective DF. A substan
tial part of the FSK has not yet been transformed into individual DFs, but into collective
DFs. There, the old structures prevail and the DF often has a
mirab
who is in charge of
water management. However, due to legal ambiguities, the DF does not necessarily perce
ives itself as being in charge of O&M and lacks the funds to do it due to high debts (see
chapter 5.1). In many cases in practice, this means that no one takes responsibility. Espe
cially when one FSK has been dissolved into several DFs or into individual DFs, no one
effectively controls the water distribution and cares for the maintenance of the chan
nels.
262
This situation prevails in all places without external donor projects.
2)
Focused WUAs
The second type of organization is represented by the Water User Associations estab
lished solely for this objective. The WUAs of the World Bank pilot projects (by CFPS)
and some of the bottom up WUAs like those established by Winrock or ACTED belong
to this category. These WUAs can be differentiated into WUAs that were established top
down and those that were developed bottom up.
3)
WUAs as part of CBO
Other WUAs are established in the framework of community development (CD) pro
grams. These programs focus on general community mobilization or poverty reduction
and use water management as a means to achieve this. This broader focus leads to the fact
that WUAs are mostly established to function within a general CBO such as a village de
velopment committee (VDC) that already existed before, albeit sometimes informally.
Not all WUAs that were established are fully functional. In technical respects, the current
system of irrigation is too complicated for farmers to fulfill the functions performed in the past
by highly specialized agencies. Therefore, training of WUA staff is needed in order to build the
professional capacities for irrigation management. At the CFPS and other programs, special
short term training sessions are offered in order to provide for the most urgently needed quali
fications.
263
Unofficially, a transfer of irrigation management to informal local institutions takes place.
Hashars
are used for O&M work. On the one hand, it is a makeshift of the local
RaiVodKhozes
,
which lack the means to do professional channel cleaning and therefore “outsource” it to the
population. In one
raion
of Sughd oblast for example, channels have only been maintained by
hashars
for more than ten years.
264
This may be justified as a temporary solution; however,
apart from legitimatacy concerns it is not adequate for larger channels. On the other hand,
hashars
are often required by international NGOs as a community contribution to the project,
which is supposed to guarantee its ownership and sustainability.
As already mentioned, there was no specialized WUA law during the research period and
also no clear legislation on the relationship between CBOs and governmental agencies. The
262
Author's interview with two representatives of a
Jamoat
Support Center, Khatlon Oblast, 10/19/2005; with two
representatives of a WUA support center, Sughd
oblast
, 09/01/2004.
263
For an exemplary curriculum see Rakhmatilloev 2003: 107.
264
Author's interview with director of
RaiVodKhoz
, Sughd oblast, 09/01/2004.
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