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Water Policy and Strategy Advisor

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Countries
Palestine

Categories
Local Government and Decentralisation, Water Sector Services, Monitoring and Evaluation, Good Governance and Public Administration, Natural Resource Management

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End date

The Technical, Planning and Advisory Team in the Water and Sanitation Sector (TPAT) is a three year technical assistance project (started in July 2011) to assist the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) in order to:

  • Facilitate the implementation by PWA of the Sector Reform processes.
  • Update water supply, sanitation and water resources management strategies towards more effective infrastructure development, improved service provision, and sustainable resource management.
  • Develop PWA’s capacity for implementation of water supply, sanitation and water resources management strategies, action plans and programs.

The TPAT project is an integral part of the Action Plan for Reform for the water sector in Palestine and one of several interrelated projects. The Institutional Water Sector Review (2010-11) has given the main direction to the further reform and related projects like the TPAT (2011-14), the Legislative Review (LR, 2011-12) and the Organizational Development (OD, 2011-2012) project.

The TPAT team includes international experts in the following fields: (1) Planning and Institutional Strengthening (TL); (2) Sanitation, Wastewater Collection, Treatment and Reuse (DTL); (3) Water Supply, (4) Water Resources Management, (5) Legal, (6) Financial-Economics and (7) Communications.

Policy and Strategy Development
The development of policies and strategies for (1) water resources, (2) water supply and (3) wastewater is considered as one of the main outputs of the project. The TPAT and the PWA have agreed that one policy and one strategy will be developed (without scenario differentiation), however, that a short-term plan for the first five years be developed, which is based on the present situation, linked to the Israeli military occupation and the constraints related to obtaining construction permits, and a long-term plan be developed for year 6 until 20, which is based on a fully independent Palestinian State and Palestinians attaining their full water rights.

PWA has issued the draft policy and strategy to the stakeholders in early 2013 and several consultation sessions have been organized for (1) national stakeholders, (2) the Water and Sanitation Working Group members, and (3) the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (EWASH) members. Verbal and written comments on the draft strategy have been received and PWA and TPAT are in the process of formulating comments and suggestions to the comments and suggestions provided by the stakeholders. One of the main stakeholders’ comments is that the first 5-year plan is overly ambitious in terms of PWA implementation capacity and in terms of the availability of donor funds.

The current expert assignment has been defined to supplement the existing TPAT expert team, and provide technical assistance to PWA to finalize the water policy and strategy document and make the document ready for submission to the Cabinet of Ministers.

The main objective of the assignment is to assist PWA to produce a final water policy and strategy document for Palestine which is agreeable to the PWA and ready for submission to the Cabinet of Ministers.

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