USAID Assists Thailand’s Provincial Waterworks Authority in Promoting Improved Access to Clean Water
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is working with Thailand’s Provincial Waterworks Authority (PWA) to promote improved access to clean water by strengthening operational efficiency of its waterworks.
USAID Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia) program signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with PWA on December 21, 2006 at the PWA Head Office. Signatories to the MOU were Deputy Governor Nakorn Jirasavetakul, Acting Governor of PWA, and Niels Van Dijk, Deputy Chief of Party of USAID ECO-Asia.
Under the MOU, ECO-Asia will support PWA in developing guidelines to reduce unaccounted for water, or non-revenue water, by building the capacity of PWA staff to conduct a water audit to assess water losses resulting from both physical and commercial sources. The guidelines will be tested and implemented in a pilot site designated for infrastructure repairs to demonstrate best practice and practical applications. Incorporating the lessons learned from the pilot, the PWA will institutionalize the water loss management guideline.
PWA will disseminate project results as model actions throughout its network of waterworks to ensure knowledge transfer and strengthen institutional capacity. As part of this initiative, ECO-Asia will link PWA with counterpart practitioners from other Asian countries who have successfully reduced their unaccounted for water.
This cooperative program will enable PWA to improve its long-term operational efficiencies and services delivery, and better target and measure its performance levels.
PWA currently manages 225 waterworks in 73 provinces and serves approximately 11.3 million people through 2.3 million connections, anticipating further increase of 860,000 connections by 2011.
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