Keynote Address by Robel Lambisso at One WASH National Program Launching, Hilton Hotel, Addis Ababa

Honourable Ministers, Donors, Representatives of International Organizations, Civil Society Organizations, Private Sectors and Invited Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very much honoured to be part of this event which aims at officially Launching the One WASH National Program and to be able to welcome you all this morning on my behalf and on the behalf of civil society organizations.  

In the past consecutive years, the WASH sector in Ethiopia has shown encouraging progress in terms of coverage, sustainability and equitable distribution. This progress in fact is attributed to the ever increasing commitment of the government and the combined effort of the civil society organizations, the donor agencies, the private sector and most importantly the communities.

As we all know, with an objective of creating Uniformity among various data and harmonizing the figures a key monitoring exercise – the National WASH Inventory- was carried out to continuously improve WASH programs and set realistic targets for the sector.

As we all in the sector understand, the Government of Ethiopia has set out its goal in the Growth & Transformation Plan(GTP), which identifies water and sanitation as one of the priority areas for achieving sustainable growth and poverty reduction. The Universal Access Plan (UAP) of the GTP targets for 2015 aim at achieving:

• 98.5% access to water supply, and reduction of the proportion of non-functioning facilities to 10%.

• 100% sanitation access, and 77% of the population to practice hand washing at critical times, safe water handling and water treatment in the home, and

• 80 % of communities to achieve open defecation free (ODF) status

According to the National WASH Inventory (NWI) initial results, the year 2011 national access to water supply was 52.1% and to sanitation was 63%. This leaves a significant gap between the GTP targets and actual coverage.

In order to facilitate achievement of the GTP and UAP targets, the government has taken the initiative & prepared a WASH Implementation Framework (WIF) to provide guidance for implementing the Program that defines the roles and responsibilities of major stakeholders in the WASH sector. CSOs have taken part in the WIF preparation & have also expressed their firm Commitment to it’s implementation by officially endorsing the document.

In the past few years, efforts have been made to compile the contributions of CSOs in the form of Annual Reports and the results indicate that CSOs are making significant contribution in the sector.

To substantiate this fact, I would like to mention the result from the third Annual CSO report which was prepared in the year 2012. The report comprised the progress and achievement of 33 CSOs working in the sector.

In this report, it was indicated that, 2,689,464 people benefitted from 2228 water supply schemes and 76, 828 Latrines distributed across the country. In addition, before and after the construction of the above facilities due consideration has been given to hygiene education and intensive promotional activities were carried out mainly focusing on the training of hygiene promoters, the expansion of CLTS&H and school clubs as well as the preparation and distribution of IEC & behaviour change materials. The financial investment for the implementation of those facilities is 305,707,318 ETB.

I believe the actual contributions are even far more than the stated amount if all the 100 CSOs working in the WASH sector regularly submit their achievements to the WSF.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Despite all the efforts & achievements, the gap is still huge & calls for unified effort from all actors in the sector.

Millions of Ethiopians still lack improved water and basic sanitation facilities, and very few people regularly wash their hands with soap and water at critical times. This is what we can easily understand from the results of NWI.

As a Chair for CSO network, allow me to raise an important issue that we would like to bring to the attention of all sector actors:

As stated on the 3rd undertaking of the 5th  which calls for  “ENSURING THE FUNCTIONALITY OF WASH SERVICES”, the development of WASH supply Chain outlets needs to be accelerated in all regions of the country.

We believe equal attention must be given for the Sustainability of the huge number of WASH facilities that will be implemented as a result of OWNP. In order to ensure the sustainability of water supply and sanitation facilities, attention needs to be given to build local level capacity, accelerate the supply chain outlets and ensure availability of spare parts at the community level.

Finally, on Behalf of WSF member organizations I would like to confirm that WSF and its member organizations would continue their contribution to bring sustainable change in the sector.  Member organizations will also update the National Database by regularly reporting the progresses & achievements we are going to make.

Thank You!