CAIRO: Egypt's water resources and wastewater management have undergone reforms which have local and foreign investors as well as donor organizations eyeing the sector to drive further improvements. At a Dec. 7 seminar held by the Greek Embassy in Cairo, Mamdouh Razlan, engineer and vice president of the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater in Egypt, said that between 2004 and 2006, donor aid organizations such as USAID and the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) were walking away from the sector due to frustrations over the consistent failings of local institutional actors. Today, however, it seems that the situation, due to a range of reforms adopted by the Egyptian government, has made a volte-face. “Donors are seeing improvements,” he said, and as a result, donors' coffers are opening up once again. USAID, for example, has offered $30 million for two projects through to 2012; the European Union is currently providing another €80 million in budget support and the World Bank is planning to fork out $300 million worth of funds for projects in the sector, Razlan indicated. Ahmad Badr, an EU official, was present to draw attention to the second phase of funding for budget support, which will be available in four to six weeks to the tune of €120 million, with another €600 million to be available in the coming four years. Razlan explained that prior to 2004, water resource and wastewater management fell under the remit of 14 different agencies, such as the Ministries of Investment, Finance, Housing and Environment. To eliminate the bureaucratic power playing over the sector, the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater (HCWW), which is under the authority of the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development, was created. Now that wastewater management is mainly supervised by one government-run body, the HCWW, as Razlan explained, is more focused on recovering costs, improving services, and developing competent staff — ameliorations within the sector are becoming visible. He went on to highlight several successes: compared to 2005, in 2010, coverage levels have grown from 40-60 percent, mobile labs for testing water quality have gone from zero to 223, yearly samples taken have increased from 100,000 to 3.7 million. Although the government, through the creation of the HCWW, seems to have made serious efforts toward reform, Badr pointed out that “the market is in need of service providers,” a gap that he feels can be bridged by EU donors and European private sector organizations. He added that sludge management continues to be a lingering issue, noting that it can be exploited for energy and cement purposes, which is currently not occurring despite private investors seeking to do so. Badr called on Greek contractors to take advantage of this opportunity as well as filling the wider wastewater management lacuna. Existing challenges Cairo-based integrated wastewater management expert, Tina Eisele, provided an independent take on the government's optimistic view of reforms it launched in the sector. She stated that while the reforms, especially with regard to the creation of the HCWW, “go in the right direction, [they] remain in their initial stages and a lot more has to be done.” In spite of having streamlined the number of institutional bodies that are involved in water resource and wastewater management, there are still too many parties, both internal and external, involved, leading to a lack of coordination in the sector, she said. Moreover, Eisele continued, the institutional bodies and actors undertaking reforms must comprehend the true “necessity for the reforms, and so far...there are still [those] that don't see the necessity or are afraid of reform.” She added that those responsible for instituting reform do not always adhere to all of the recommendations made by donor agencies, which leads to further pitfalls. Changing the tariff structure, she underscored, is the main challenge for the sector since water and wastewater service are subsidized. If the government proposes a tariff increase, “people will say, why should I have to pay for something that is [already] free?” she noted. These reforms, she stated, will likely take “decades” to fully implement due to the time required for people's attitudes — both those receiving government services as well as government sector employees — to adapt. While there are proponents for raising the tariff and user charges, others are opposed to such an idea, because, as Eisele pointed out, a governor will say: “What does it look like if I tell my people in my governorate that they have to pay higher prices?” Eisele summed up by recalling that the reforms undertaken are nonetheless on the right track, but the government must not “lean back” and become complacent, thinking its early successes will suffice. She added that it would be instructive for the Egyptian government to learn from the best practices of its neighbors, such as Jordan, for instance, that have been learning to tackle comparable challenges. Eisele concluded by noting that an event was held on water resource and wastewater management sector palpably indicates that the Egyptian government is aware of and serious about tackling the obstacles it faces in the sector.
