WASMO - Water and Sanitation Management Organisation

WASMO was conferred with the United Nations Public Service Award at a high level ceremony at the UN Headquarters in New York on June 23, 2009. The Award is a prestigious international recognition to an Indian organisation in the field of public service. The Award was received by Mr. V. S. Gadhavi, Secretary, Water Supply, Narmada, Water Resources and Kalpsar Department Government of Gujarat. Other member of the delegation included Dr. Jaipal Singh, Additional Secretary, Water Supply and CEO, WASMO, Government of Gujarat. WASMO was conferred the Award under the Category for, “Fostering Participation in Policy-making Decisions through Innovative Institutional Mechanisms”.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General
of the United Nations presents the United Nations Public Service Award
to Mr. V. S. Gadhavi, Secretary,
Water Supply, Government of Gujarat.

Certificate received by WASMO

At the ceremony, Mr. Gadhavi delivered the following short statement: “His Excellency Secretary General, United Nations, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a privilege for me to represent our innovative governance initiative in the field of ‘Fostering Participation in Policy-Making Decisions through Innovative Mechanisms’. We, at Government of Gujarat, India, could set up an innovative autonomous Special Purpose Vehicle for a mission mode approach for effective community engagement and empowerment for decentralization of water supply and sanitation services. The ‘out of box’ initiative, could work and now the organization has been able to create the necessary enabling environment for strong community engagement and almost 75% of the total villages of the State have embraced the community-led development in WATSAN se4ctor, one of the major agenda of UN Millennium Development Goals.

Building working partnerships with reputed NGOs, other sector players and community has not only given effective institutional mechanisms for development, it has provided a great learning experience about the capacity of community led governance at local levels. We have been able to achieve a paradigm shift in role of governance from ‘provider to facilitator’ wherein community has demonstrated the philosophy that ‘users are the best managers’. The issues of ownership and inclusion are prudently resolved in the village meetings. There has been a sea change in allocative a well as technical efficacy. The entire initiative has a great impact on the overall Human Development Index in the State. In a water-scarce State like Gujarat, the governance model in the form of WASMO has tried to bring in sustainability for WATSAN sector.

I extend my sincere thanks to UNPAN for providing us the opportunity to showcase our initiative which is replicable not only in WATSAN but other development sectors as well. I can only tell that in the community engaged development approach we have put faith in their capacity, trust them, facilitate them and allowed them to work as per their wish. At the core of WASMO has been the idea of Public-Public-Partnership’ paradigm for a citizen centric, efficient public service mechanism.

I again thank the UN Public Administration Network and the Department of Economic and social Affairs for awarding the United Nations Public Service Award to WASMO and also thank the distinguished gathering for a patient listening”.

The Award Ceremony was followed by and Experts Group Meeting and Capacity Development Workshop on “Promoting Innovations in Governance and Public Administration to Achieve the United Nations Development Goals”. Dr. Jaipal Singh, CEO, WASMO made a presentation on WASMO’s initiative entitled ‘Institutionalization of community managed drinking water supply programme and user level water quality monitoring’. The session was chaired by Dr. Roberto Villarreal, Chief, Socio-Economic Governance Branch, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, DESA, United Nations, and Dr. Siripurapu Kesava Rao, Director, General Administrative Staff College of India, India was the discussant. A presentation was also done by the finalist in the category from the Republic of Korea.