How many people does it take to deliver universal access to water and sanitation?

July 29th, 2013

Tom Williams & Kirsten de Vette, International Water Association, the Netherlands

The short answer is: we don’t know. Collected data on human resources in the water and sanitation sector are so sparse that many countries don’t know existing capacity let alone what the future demand is to enable universal access.

The need for Human Resource (HR) development to support water and sanitation services was formally recognised as a priority as long ago as 1977 at the UN Water Conference in Mar del Plata (Argentina). Over the past two decades, a number of influential reports focused on water and sanitation have again highlighted the urgent need to develop adequate HR. The UK International Development Committee1 stated that “beyond lack of finance investment, a lack of institutional, organisational and individual capacity at national and local level is more serious”.

Employing the right number and calibre of people in a suitably enabling environment to facilitate service delivery is a crucial ingredient in the process of meeting MDG target 7c (“Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”) and, beyond 2015, universal coverage. The health2 and education3,4 sectors have collected evidence on HR development needs, but the nature and magnitude of staffing needs for water and sanitation services remain largely unknown.

Generally, the research required to elucidate HR gaps has received relatively little attention due to the fragmentation and inherent complexities of water and sanitation systems and services. This is highlighted by the 2012 UN-Water GLAAS report5 where nearly half of the countries surveyed were unable to answer how many staff are working in the sector and only a third of the respondents were able to give projections of staffing needs for 2016.

Since 2009 IWA has developed and applied a methodological framework and Excel-based tool to collect data on HR gaps (skill) and shortages (number of workers) at the national level in the water and sanitation sector. On the basis of a sample of private-, public- and non-governmental organisations in the countries, the methodological framework guided the process of collecting information on HR demand (the ideal human resource composition) to construct, operate and maintain and mobilise communities, and compared that with existing capacity as well as the supply (from the education sector). The Excel-based tool, using population rates (including growth) and coverage figures, estimated the numbers at national level^. The results and conclusions of assessments in 10 countries are presented here.

Human resource capacity gaps

The study results indicate significant shortages and gaps, with great variations in numbers due to varying contexts, coverage rates, mechanisms/methods of delivery, definitions of professionals and other factors. Overall, there was a significant shortage, especially for technically qualified staff disciplines at mid- and engineering levels*. Additionally, many of the countries reported a high shortage of social development personnel. Over-supply in personnel was particularly found in the management and finance disciplines, with a focus on administrative personnel.

What we now know

The following key points represent clear findings that provide a point of departure for making informed decisions and on-going support to bridge HR capacity gaps for water and sanitation services:

1. Any future investments to improve and sustain water and sanitation services will be severely undermined unless immediate steps are taken to incrementally address HR demands in the medium- to long-term.

2. Decentralization of responsibilities is not being accompanied by appropriate financial or HR to effectively take on those additional responsibilities at the local level. Developing cooperation between local governments and/or consolidation of HR across neighbouring districts/municipalities would alleviate some of the inefficiency associated with replicating services in adjacent local jurisdictions.

3. There is a clear disparity in the HR requirements for rural versus urban water and sanitation services. This divergence in needs requires separate strategies, funding mechanisms and supporting initiatives to ensure that the HR demands can be met. However, such strategies should identify areas of joint action at the interface of urban and rural systems, such as peri-urban settlements.

4. The mismatch between supply (shortage and skills of professionals entering the job market) and demand (the number and skills or workers required) is one of the key factors significantly undermining the sustainability of the water and sanitation sector. Partnerships between universities, training institutes and employers in the sector need to be established and financed for both technical and administrative functions.

5. Sanitation services are significantly undermined by a poor supply of professionals to the sector. In urgent need of attention is the low level and inadequate quality of curricula covering sanitary engineering in universities in low and middle income countries. Greater efforts need to be made in establishing courses and incentives put in place to attract students.

What we think we know

The following key points represent unconfirmed findings that require further clarity and understanding:

1. Consideration should be given to the non-financial incentives and motivations to attract newly qualified and skilled personnel and to retain experienced personnel so they are not lost to other sectors, such as mining, construction, banking sectors.

2. Appropriate public policies need to be in place to support job creation, such as investing in skills to support labour supply and enabling private sector engagement to stimulate an increase in labour demand.

3. Low levels of access to and inadequate coverage of courses in tertiary education institutes is a significant bottleneck to meeting HR demands. Professional Vocational Training institutes may help in meeting these demands.

4. The dependence on communities, volunteers and semi-skilled workers in rural areas is not sustainable without adequate institutional and operational support from local government and structured, formalised support from the professional sector.

5. The water supply and sanitation sector will benefit greatly from increased gender equality that translates into more women being active in service provision. Whilst they have consistently been excluded from entering the sector and contributing to planning, implementation and operational aspects of water supply and sanitation management, we should further investigate women’s role in decision making as they have extensive knowledge on what service provision is required.

6. Operation and maintenance of water and sanitation systems are chronically and universally neglected, with inadequate financial and HR support. The appropriate education and skills requirement to operate and maintain specific technologies has not been appropriately assessed and would greatly benefit the sector.

7. From a national public sector perspective, strengthening the HR base for the delivery of water and sanitation services will, through reduction of water-related diseases, alleviate the pressure on HR (doctors, health workers etc)as well as financial resources in the public health sector – investing in WASH HR development is investing in health.

What we don’t know

The following key points represent significant knowledge gaps that once elucidated will strengthen the evidence based for informed decision making and on-going support to bridging HR capacity gaps:

1. Data on the HR requirements for water and sanitation services is to a large extent unavailable. This is a major limitation in estimating what HR are available in which sector and across which skills set. Without credible data to estimate the real HR shortages across all components and segments of water, sanitation and hygiene provision, the sector will not be able to attract the needed attention.

2. There is no information available on the current or needed levels of funding required to support capacity development, either in totality, from government or the donor community. Work should be conducted to ascertain the current level of funding dedicated to capacity development and the funding gap.

3. Effective policies for improving HR capacity at a national level are not well documented. More work needs to be done on distilling and synthesising lessons learned from countries who have made significant advances in addressing HR capacity gaps.

What next

The IWA HRCD study results, as presented in this article, will be used to advocate globally for investment in HR capacity in the sector. IWA will continue to strengthen the evidence base to support HR planning and development, and will work with in-country champions to catalyse and/coordinate the development of National Capacity Development Plans.

Table Footnotes:

A1In Ghana the extreme high shortages in the sanitation field are due to the very low coverage rate for sanitation, as well as the fact that the study included unskilled (or not professionally educated) staff to construct all the facilities.

A2The surplus in MDGs (and water) is due to the management and finance disciplines. There is a small shortage in technical personnel and larger shortage in the social development category.

A3In the Philippines, the complexity of the data collection did not allow the same method to be used as in other countries. Therefore this table only presents total figures that are based on Water and Sanitation technical field personnel and para-technicians only. This case study distinguished between low and high productivity.

A4In Sri Lanka the country team saw a larger surplus on sanitation personnel in the long run (for universal coverage) than in the short run, which may have been due to current construction needs.

A5The shortages have been derived from the samples within the countries. Negative figures indicate surpluses in professionals.

Footnotes:

^The numbers are estimations, generalizing the sample data to nationally representative shortages. The numbers should be interpreted as trends rather than absolute shortages.

*WATSAN Technical field, and other technical fields were the disciplines according to IWA’s methodological guidance.

References:

1. International Development Committee (2007), “Sanitation and Water Sixth Report of Session 2006-07 Volume I Report”, together with formal minutes Ordered by The House of Commons.

2. WHO (2006), The World Health Report 2006: working together for health. World Health Organisation Press, Geneva, Switzerland.

3. UNESCO (2009), “Projecting the global demand for teachers: Meeting the goal of universal primary education by 2015”, UIS Technical Paper No. 3 at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001863/186397e.pdf.

4. UNESCO (2010), Education for all Global Monitoring Report 2010. UNESCO Publishing, Paris France and Oxford University Press, Oxford United Kingdom.

5. UN-Water (2012), UN-Water global assessment of sanitation and drinking-water (GLAAS) 2012 report: The challenge of extending and sustaining services. World Health Organisation Press, Geneva, Switzerland.

Tom Williams is the Programmes Director for the International Water Association. Tom has been with IWA since 2003 and has a background in public health and microbiology. Tom is based in the Hague office and is responsible for the programmes group who coordinate the six thematic programmes of the Association. Kirsten de Vette is a Programmes Officer for the International Water. Kirsten joined IWA in 2009 as a project officer in support of programmes focused on low and middle-income countries. Kirsten, now a programmes officer, is based in the Hague office and coordinates programme Human Resources and Capacity Development, as well as the activities of the IWA Young Water Professionals. The IWA Human Resource Capacity Development programme aims to contribute to improving the evidence based in regards to human resource capacity gaps and needs in the sector. The programmes puts ‘local’ institutions, such as training institutes and membership associations, at the forefront of understanding and responding to local capacity development requirements. For further information see http://www.iwahq.org/themes/hrcd.

The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.