An information and awareness-raising session was organized in December 2019 for the municipalities in the OmiDelta project intervention areas as part of the implementation of the Governance component of the OmiDelta Non-State Actors Fund (NSA) programme by the CWP-Benin, Social Watch and ALCRER consortium. During that session, the communes were trained on the Annotated Integrity Assessment Tool (EAIE) to allow them make the self-assessment of their own integrity practices.
Following the awareness-raising workshop, the municipalities expressed their adherence to the Charter, which is a sign of their commitment to adopt and promote integrity practices in their territory. To this end, the municipality of OUINHI (located in the Ouémé Department), which has formalized its adherence to the Charter, was supported by CWP-Benin to develop its action plan for the promotion of integrity in the water and sanitation sector, which will be implemented over three years.
The workshop, which was led by the WASH Governance Expert of CWP-Benin, Mr. Rachad ALIMI, was attended by about forty stakeholders from the various water sectors. They are the actors of the decentralized water and health service, the local elected officials under the effective chairmanship of the Mayor of the Commune, as well as the Other Local Actors of the CWP and users (VWA operators, delegates, farmers, fountain keepers and craftsmen (repairers and plumbers), as well as the NGOs involved in the water and sanitation sector in the Commune.
The general objective of the workshop is to promote good integrity practices in the drinking water supply and basic sanitation sector in the commune of Ouinhi.
At the end of the workshop, in which the participants actively participated, a three-year action plan was developed, based on the results of the self-assessment of the current integrity practice in the WASH sector of this Commune.
According to the mayor of the Commune, this workshop was timely, as it allowed to become aware of the inadequacies in integrity practices that clearly hindered the good management of the Public Water Utility.