Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Bangkok work in what is essentially a branch of World Bank/Washington,
a luxury office with luxury equipment, and the World Bank staff contacts
are mostly with high-level country officials. Rarely are these staff exposed
to actual working-level conditions in the country. Yet these are the persons
who plan the TT projects.
Lack of understanding that almost all environmental protection technology
has been developed in the affluent ICs and is not directly applicable to DCs
but must be modified to suit DC conditions (see Figure 4.3), and lack of
sufficient training in how to make the modifications.
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Use of consultants for conducting TT projects who have the same back-
grounds and the same deficiencies as just noted.
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Assumption that TT can be achieved with “slug type” projects (e.g., assign-
ment of an EIA technology expert or a team of experts to the country for one
year). But TT/EIA is not that easy. What is needed is for continuing expat
inputs (can be on a part-time basis) for a prolonged period. For EIA/TT,
the best approach is for continuing inputs over a period of several years.
For one of the author's projects to train the staff of the Institute of Water
Resources Development of the Ministry of Public Works of Indonesia at
Bandung on environmental technology, the original plan of the sponsoring
agency (UNDP) was for the expert to spend 3 months at Bandung full-time,
but the UNDP agreed at the author's suggestion to change the plan to four
visits each of 3 weeks, covering a period of a year. This kind of teaching
is like university teaching, where a typical approach includes a number of
lectures (usually 20) spread over a period of one half-year semester. Trying
to achieve the TT on a slug basis is not the way, but the IAAs almost always
use it because it “saves” travel time. For the case under discussion, the author
advised the UNDP that its original plan would not be successful — hence,
UNDP should use the “prolonged approach” or cancel the entire project and
save all the money
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Planning the TT course must be DC oriented, using appropriate standards
affordable in the DCs. One of the IAA/TT projects in Thailand for protecting
marine beaches utilized experts from California to do the teaching. Their
lectures were about the state of California's program for beach protection,
where the standards for protection are hugely high and not affordable in
DCs. The lectures were all about the California practices
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Another nonproductive approach in IAA planning of TT projects is that the
project target is production of training manuals by the expat experts, and for
such a project for the Provincial Waterworks Authority (PWA) in Thailand
sponsored by World Bank, the manuals produced were actually appropriate,
but the project budget did not permit the expert team to produce the manuals
in close association with the PWA staff, or to explain them to the PWA
staff. Therefore, the manuals were rarely “accepted” and used by the PWA
staff
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