Sound Management Of Water Service, Learn From Good Practices

Located in JICA Yokohama International Center, in last January 25 JICA held a seminar with the theme “Urban Water Service Management and Human Resource Development in Asia”. This seminar was the main agenda of the whole 2-weeks training that organized by JICA for water service managers from six countries in south east asia region.

The seminar focused on good practices of water service management, and was moderated by Prof. Satoshi Takizawa, professor of Urban Engineering in the University of Tokyo. The panelists were the managers of water service institution that have been successfully implements health management and improve their service performances.

To start up, Dr. Hiromichi Sakamoto , Director of Federation of Japan Water Industries, explained the development of water supply in Japan. He summed up with the future direction of water supply in Japan, which are: building water recycle system with energy-saving effect, and developing the financial support system to promote wide-area planning (example: involvement on PPP). He also mentioned that today’s challenge of Japan water service sector is the decreasing of specialized young Japanese engineer in that field.

Mr. Hiromu Nishimura was the next presenter who gives explanation about the rapid improvement of water service in Manila City. In that seminar, Manila Water, which where Mr. Nishimura was the Director from 2001 until 2010, was the only one privatized water supply company that have a chance to show their accomplishment so far. After 12 years of privatization, Manila Water can decrease non-revenue water from 63% down to 15.8% and increase 24-hours supply coverage to 99% of their service area. Those achievements were attained by transforming corporate value (adopting 5S from Japan), territory management approach, and lead to good corporate governance. However, Manila Water got a strong strike from Manila Metropolitan government officer, who also attend the seminar as participants, regarding the effort to search new water sources.

Speak for Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA), Mr. Boonchou Phuaprasert as the Deputy Governor presented the water service management in Bangkok, Thailand. The key concepts of MWA activities are water leakage management application, customer service orientation, and combined with key value management. Also, MWA provide a sufficient budget for training and give incentive to outstanding employees. With that approach, MWA was getting the highest profit ever in year 2010 as well as getting the award for Outstanding State-Enterprise in the same year.

The last presentation was by Mr. Samreth Sovithia, the Plan and Project Department Director of Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), Cambodia. He was so much emphasized on the transparency and corruption fighting on the institution. The General Director of PPWSA is giving example by himself and implementing tight rules of good governance development. Those management strategies have bringing PPWSA from the bankruptcy to the health financial condition.

The attendances of the seminar were fulfilling the conference room, including the observers from water service bureaus, waterworks companies, JICA specialist, academicians, and other practitioners. Unfortunately, in the seminar time only training participants that allowed to ask questions. But anyway, observers have the chance to discuss with moderator, panelists, and all participants in gala dinner time.