Wolanyo Sabi Regional Director CWSA Upper west regional

What is sustainability?

Sustainability has something to do with providing continuous services to the community over a long period probably beyond the life of the water facility. This demands that management, those involved must keep the system running.

 What are you as a key sector stakeholder as regional coordinator doing about sustainability?

From larger part of CWAS, we are considering to moving back to the strategy of community owner and management. Trying to de-link management from ownership so that we a can view management as the linkage to service delivery. Because we need the people with the right abilities to be able to manage a system to provide the services that are needed.

In the region in upper west we have started talking to the water boards to see if the management structure is ok and the district assemblies that is what the region is engaging in.

 Do you think that there is a linkage between sector learning and sustainability?

I think what learning alliance is doing , is trying to collect the knowledge we got in the sector and trying  play it over and over so that we all know this knowledge is available.

The challenges are how do we transfer this knowledge to the users, because this user are not in cities, they are in the communities and villages and districts. That is why personally I think why should move to the regional level and communities to engage the communities to share the knowledge that they have.