Investing in irrigation

According to MOWRAM, there are more than 2,500 irrigation schemes in Cambodia. Most of these schemes were constructed during Pol Pot regime and are today in nearly total disrepair.

Agriculture is a key sector of the Cambodian economy and improving its productivity is essential to address rural poverty. for this reason, increasing reliable water availability figures amongst the government development startegic priorities. Since the 1990s, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) is heavily investing in developing the country's irrigation infrastructures with the support of international partners (ADB, AFD, JICA, IMF, etc.).

Nevertheless after their rehabilitation, many schemes are not operating properly due to both design and management problems. The effective irrigated area is often much smaller than planned. Maintenance is very insufficient and after few years, infrastructures are in very poor condition. In consequence, the economic valorization of infrastructure investments is limited.

The management transfer to the FWUC

Since 2000, through the Participatory Irrigation Management and Development (PIMD) policy, RGC - MOWRAM is transferring the scheme management to Farmer Water User Communities (FWUC). In 2010, there were more than 350 FWUCs officially registered by MOWRAM.

The FWUC are in charge of:

• Institutional management (members registration, committee election, etc.)
• Scheme operation and water sharing between users
• Infrastructure maintenance
• Irrigation Service Fee (ISF) collection and financial management

Why to develop services?

FWUC often meet difficulties beyond their technical capacities and, occasionaly, they require some technical support from professionals, for example to help them with financial management, engineering, database updating, etc.

Based on their experiences, GRET and CEDAC consider that there is a need for specific services to strengthen FWUC and make them able to manage their scheme in a sustainable way.

ASIrri vision

A pool of professionals, with a practical experience of irrigation management issues, provides affordable and quality services to FWUC and other Farmer Organizations.

Why are FWUC often not active?

After rehabilitation works are completed, many schemes remain non-functional due to design problems, an unreliable water source or because secondary or tertiary infrastructures have not been built. In such cases, there is little chance that the organization of a FWUC will make them functional.

In other cases, even the scheme is operational, FWUC are being established at the very end of infrastructure rehabilitations. At best the users' representatives attended some theorical training sessions, but have no practical knowledge and experiences. When the scheme starts operating, external supports are already finished and the FWUC are let alone without clear understanding of their responsibilities and the way to solve problems, especially when conflicts between upstream and downstream users arise.

In consequence, most of them are unable to operate, to maintain infrastructure and even less to collect the ISF. The users' representatives are poorly trained and receive very little technical and financial support from MOWRAM. If no external support is brought to them, many FWUC committees abandon their responsibilities.

Where to find support services?

Indeed the proper implementation of the tasks they are responsible for requires a large variety of skills, such as: meeting organization with their members and with local authorities, database management, accounting, new infrastructures design, bidding and contracting procedures, etc.

Due to budget constraints, not all of these tasks can be done by professional staff permanenty recruited by the FWUC. Exernal private or public services are also difficult to access, expensive and often not adapted to the FWUC particular needs.

Hence, there is room (and need) for the development of alternative service providers such as the ISC for:

• FWUC capacity building beyong their creation, when they start operating
• strengthening existing FWUC and providing occasional technical supports for tasks beyond the FWUC capacities

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