Commercial Principles in Karak Governorate
The objective of the project is to provide specialised managerial, engineering, technical and administrative support for the establishment of a decentralised and commercially operated Water Administration for the Governorate of Karak (WAK) and to implement a technically feasible and economically viable concept for the optimisation of the running processes. The legal establishment of the decentralised and semi-autonomous WAK was be done by WAJ through the delegation of powers from WAJ HQ to WAK as was done previously in NGWA.
The WAK is characterised by a problematic management of water and sewerage operations with NRW currently estimated to reach more than 50%. The operating cost recovery is estimated to equal approximately 33%. The number of personnel employed in WAK totals 449 employees. Total number of subscribers for the Governorate is 33,623. That equals a personnel indicator of 13.4 employees per 1000 connections (without sewerage). Hence, the administration is overstaffed while performance is low. Therefore, it is required that the present administrative structure should be improved and the internal efficiency of service delivery be increased in order to ensure the medium and long term sustainability of the investment programs. The accompanying measures component is one component of the overall WLRP for Karak. The Consultant shall cooperate closely with the WLRP Consultant in this accompanying measures component in order to achieve the overall program objectives.
The provision of reliable base data is a prerequisite for the analysis and re-organization of business units. In a first step, a Comprehensive Subscriber Survey (CSS) throughout Karak Governorate shall be carried out in order to collect all subscriber data including the location (address) and to update the accumulated information in the existing customer database. To support the activities of the survey and in order to provide updated base maps to the field surveyors, a GIS unit shall be established prior to the start of CSS, taking care of all relevant mapping activities.
In parallel, the decentralisation process shall be initiated and the necessary approvals and authorization letters of WAJ will be prepared. Additionally, all processes related to customer management (meter reading, billing, collection and updating of customer information) must be restructured and employees must be trained on the job in order to guarantee a continuous updating of information to the customer database once the survey has been completed.
As a second step, business reengineering reflecting the new organizational structure and application of newly introduced GIS based ICT tools shall be carried out. In order to improve performance of WAK significantly, an adjustment of work flows and business procedures in all business fields must take place; in addition to that, training of the employees should take place. Additionally to subscriber management, especially activities related to finance and accounting, material management, technical affairs, administration, personnel development, and ICT shall be tackled.
The contract value is EUR 2.2 million and is financed completely by the German KfW Development Bank (Grant) which further provides funds of EUR 25 million for a water loss reduction program in the project area. These improvement projects are supervised and monitored by the Programme Management Unit (PMU) and will also contribute to the performance indicator and benchmarking system which is currently in its establishment phase by PMU.
