Water and Sanitation in Benin: Is Aid Working?
Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 September 2011 09:42 Written by Awepa Friday, 26 August 2011 09:53
Cotonou, 8 August 2011 - The Parliament of Benin is stepping up its efforts to control the government's action and evaluate the effectiveness of aid flows in meeting people's needs. A delegation of MPs, supported by AWEPA staff together with National Assembly staff, conducted a series of public hearings last week in rural areas in the southern provinces of Ouidah and Abomey and central province of Parakou.
Despite improvements made in recent years, today in Benin over half of the population does not have access to potable water and basic sanitation. In many areas figures are lower. In Bohicon, for instance, a municipality located in the province of Abomey, access to potable water among urban population is just 35% and as low as 8% in rural areas. Benin receives substantial aid flows that reached 10% of its GDP in 2009, of which an important part is dedicated to water and sanitation. But are these funds well used? And do they meet the needs of the local population?
The objective of the public hearings was precisely to evaluate the use of donor funds, whether they are effectively spent and achieve results that match the needs of local populations. In particular the hearings targeted projects developed in the context of the PPEA (Plan pluriannuel d'appui au secteur Eau et Assainissement). Mainly financed by the Netherlands, investments have been made to bring drinking water to 440 000 people in Benin and to ensure basic sanitation services in places of agglomeration such as schools, health clinics and markets.
The delegation of MPs visited bore holes and water pumps as well as latrines installed in a school and a market. The public hearings directly involved the beneficiaries of these services and served to collect their feedback on aspects such as the distance of the service, its cost, usefulness, as well as the direct participation of local communities in the project's design, management and maintenance.
They also enabled the beneficiaries to voice other development concerns they are currently facing. Members of Parliament strengthened their knowledge of the challenges and concerns of local communities related to water and sanitation. The exercise also served to experiment a methodology for conducting public hearings in Benin that the parliament intends to further refine, expand to other sectors, and institutionalise moving forward. As one MP said, "this exercise has refreshed our memory on what is to be the essential function of an elected parliamentarian: to listen to the people, collect their views and concerns, and let these lead us in exercising our legislative mandate and oversight functions. We should now further develop this methodology to make it our own and use it again to control the government's action, not only as concerns aid effectiveness, but our entire development agenda".
The public hearings organised in Benin are part of a broader process to strengthen the role of parliamentarians in overseeing aid flows, matching these to the needs of the people, and building ties with donor-country parliamentarians to strengthen mutual accountability. The initiative falls within the "ODA monitoring project" led by AWEPA and AIID (the Amsterdam Institute of International Development) in cooperation with five African countries (Benin, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania) and three donor countries (Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden).
