Engagés pour l'eau et l'assainissement urbains

The emergence of a new public service in Port-de-Paix (Haiti)

Since the start of 2011, LYSA has provided strategic support in the form of a Technical Assistance contract to a public authority:

The Centre Technique d’Exploitation (CTE) of Port-de-Paix (130,000 inhabitants; 40km network), the second largest town in the North of Haiti.
The common objective of LYSA and CTE, set by the National drinking water and sanitation directorate of the Republic of Haiti (DINEPA)*** is to make the CTE of Port-de-Paix the first model of profitable public management.

LYSA's mission is to provide strategic support to the CTE for the takeover of the operation, to develop and implement a plan of action and immediate investment and accompany its director and its team to put into service and deploy the public service on the whole of the new network (25 km). LYSA, through its operational experience in Haiti and internationally, has the role of preparing the CTE operationally for the start-up of the operation: to improve its commercial management, to equip it with managerial, technical and financial methods and tools necessary for it to be able to continue its public service mission in the medium and long term.

From the very start of the mission, LYSA implemented the means for leading the desired change, both as regards the poorly motivated personnel, set in their ways and lacking in technical means and tools, who had not been paid for seven months, and also as regards the DINEPA that is in the process of construction, whose influence is growing, and who needs feedback from its first CTE to fine-tune its strategy of deployment of the service public on a national scale. The DINEPA particularly asked LYSA to monitor the quality of the work in progress, in order to ensure the immediate operability of the infrastructure as soon as acceptance was pronounced.

The initial signs are encouraging: a team is now being formed, is learning to work together towards the common objective of modernisation of the public service and receipts have been gradually increasing since LYSA arrived.
In the course of the first six months, the CTE has in particular made significant steps forward, not least in Haiti’s public system:

  • the DINEPA has adjusted the remuneration of the entire personnel, to reward it for its efforts and for the results achieved by the CTE team during the first half year. This is a first for a provincial town!
  • The DINEPA has accepted the idea of experimenting for the first time with the application of variable performance-based collective and individual remuneration. This is a first for a public authority!
  • The General Directorates of OREPA North and DINEPA have validated the 2011-2012 budget and the associated start-up plan of action drawn up by the director of the CTE with LYSA's support. A decisive step for the implementation of the plan of action!

The CTE must take advantage of this leverage to build its project. The personnel must redouble their efforts as there is still a lot to be done to realise this ambitious plan of action which makes provision over the next three years:

  • for gradually putting the new network into service, hydraulic sector by hydraulic sector, on the basis of a demand led approach
  • for the contractualisation and fitting of 3,000 new connections for users of the new network
  • for the rehabilitation of 500 connections no longer supplied by the previous source Cacao
  • for the provision to 30 to 40% of the population, by means of individual connections and collective water points (water sales kiosks)