This high level meeting between the government and donors endorsed the progress of the National Target Programme for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (NTP II) and agreed on the way forward.
At the meeting, the government and donors who provide budget support to the NTP II including Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K expressed their satisfaction of the overall progress of the programme. As concluded by the 2010 Joint Annual Review mission (2010 JAR), the NTP II and donors’ support to the NTP II continued improving over the past years.
Key achievements of the programme during 2009 and the first six months of 2010 included improvement of the legal framework, improved coordination among programme agencies at both central and local level, implementation of the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) data collection and piloting new sanitation initiatives.
However, the government and donors agreed that challenges remain, particularly in the areas of sanitation, budgeting and planning, and quality and enforcement of reporting. These areas were graded as less satisfactory or not satisfactory by the 2010 JAR mission.
The government and donors also discussed the actions that different government agencies should take to address the challenges and weaknesses of the programme if the targets of the 2011 work plan are to be fulfilled.
The government and donors endorsed the Review Aide Memoire of the 2010 JAR and its recommendations. The four key recommendations concerned sanitation, M&E, social impact, and poverty targeting, and the programme document for rural water supply and sanitation (2011-2015). To know more about the 2010 JAR, please read here.
Process and time-line of the development of the national programme for rural water supply and sanitation (2011-2015) was also part of the meeting agenda. The government informed donors that the current draft document had incorporated many suggestions and comments as a result of various rounds of consultations with the government ministries, provinces, donors, and the civil society. This national document will be the basis for donors to prepare for their future support to the sector (2011-2015) once their current support ends in December 2011.
