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Published on: 03/03/2010

The project included two components: (i) infrastructure rehabilitation and improvement and (ii) implementation, monitoring, and coordination support. The project followed a community-driven development approach and provided rural communities with social and technical facilitation and financial resources to meet their priority infrastructure needs. It adopted simple implementation arrangements, under which rural communities, facilitated by district public works services and assisted by village organizers, selected and designed the priority infrastructure.

Each participating village received a block grant of about $25,000 to upgrade infrastructure.

The project was executed by the Directorate General of Human Settlements (DGHS) of the Ministry of Public Works (MPW).

Overall, the ADB rated the project as successful. Basic infrastructure for 1,840 rural villages was successfully upgraded, improving the welfare and standard of living of some 2 million people by improving roads, bridges, irrigation and drainage canals, irrigation systems, and systems for safe water supply and sanitation. Community members fully participated in carrying out civil works, but the potential of the project to empower communities and build capacity for community planning and development was not fully realized in poorly educated villages.

Lessons

Major lessons drawn from the project include the following:

(i) Community Mobilization. Qualified and experienced community facilitators and sufficient time for community empowerment are important to build a sound and common understanding of project principles and ensure that community members are sufficiently involved in prioritizing their needs, developing investment proposal, and making decisions. The four provinces are at different stages of development, with households in East Java having the highest standard of living and education, followed by South Sulawesi, South East Sulawesi, and East Nusa Tenggara. Less-developed communities need a longer period of socialization and capacity building to fully understand their options in selecting investment proposals that will maximize benefits. These communities need more time and assistance from facilitators or local government administrations to develop and implement village development plans. It would thus have been useful if the project had been implemented in stages, providing more time for community mobilization in less-developed districts.

(ii) Failure to Incorporate Lessons into New Projects. The appraisal report mentioned several lessons from earlier projects, but they were not incorporated into this project. These lessons include the following: (i) A fixed grant size may not be appropriate for all villages, as village size and existing infrastructure greatly differ among provinces and districts. (ii) Longer implementation with geographic phasing of activities within districts helps provide sufficient preparation and avoid the bunching of approvals for village infrastructure plans.

(iii) Longer implementation provides opportunities for periodic stocktaking and improving project design.

(iii) Maintenance of Infrastructure. Greater focus should be placed on maintenance arrangements, which should be incorporated into village investment proposals and monitored by district administrations. For an investment of Rp250 million and an estimated maintenance cost of 5% annually, this would require Rp10 million/year, or Rp50,000/household/year, assuming a village average of 200 households. This collection of a maintenance fee is feasible, as this practice is widespread in domestic water-supply subprojects.

(iv) Measurable Objectives. A sound baseline survey to establish key benchmarks—including average household income, access to water supply and proper sanitation, traffic volume on existing roads, and other socioeconomic indicators—allows better qualifying and quantifying of project accomplishments. At PCR (project completion review), a similar survey should be carried out to assess the project impact.

(v) Governance. Greater attention should be placed on ensuring the transparent dissemination of investment plans, budgets, tenders, contracts, and financial records to help prevent fraud and corruption. Administrative and procurement procedures should be clearly explained to communities so that they will be capable of monitoring project progress. Public accountability mechanisms were not put in place in all project villages, which creates the risk of leakage and elite capture of project benefits.

(vi) Work Quality. The quality of basic infrastructure construction needs constant monitoring. Low quality of technical design of infrastructure work and lack of maintenance arrangements were observed in many villages. Additional assistance from district administrations and technical consultants and facilitators is required, especially when unskilled village labor participates in construction, to ensure a suitable standard of quality.

(vii) Consultants and Facilitators. Greater attention should be placed on recruiting qualified and experienced consultants and facilitators to ensure that they have the appropriate skills and motivation to undertake the tasks assigned to them.

(viii) Monitoring Procedures. With decentralization, the national government no longer exercises administrative control over regional governments. Likewise, provincial governments do not have administrative control over district governments. Consequently, project implementation units are under the administrative supervision of the local governments. However, for national projects, appropriate monitoring arrangements should be in place to exercise administrative and technical supervision over PPIUs and DPIUs. Accountability relationships were, however, unclear. Thus, performance evaluation, incentives, and sanctions remain as sensitive issues that could affect smooth project implementation.

(ix) Income generation. Improved basic infrastructure does not in itself immediately translate into poverty reduction, given the narrow base of most village economies.

Recommendations

(i) Improved Targeting of Poor Villages. The mechanism to select project villages should ensure that the poorest communities benefit from project interventions.

(ii) Sufficient Time for Community Mobilization. CDD is demonstratively more effective in basic infrastructure development than other approaches. Evidence indicates that CDD is likely to offer better cost recovery and maintenance of completed infrastructure because of community members' strong sense of ownership. CDD provides better accountability, as transparency in decision making and procurement and the increased use of audits demonstrably reduce corruption and leakage. Thus, projects should allow sufficient time to support and
strengthen community participation; empowerment; and capacity to prioritize, design, implement, manage, and monitor project investments.

(iii) Community facilitators. Experienced and qualified facilitators are key to ensuring community empowerment. Priority should be placed on appointing facilitators from the same project districts, and they should be given proper support from consultants and district administrators. A strengthened process for selecting, training, and guiding community facilitation is needed, including detailed training programs, regular meetings of community facilitators from different districts to share experiences and lessons, and the increased involvement of local administrations to monitor the performance of facilitators and provide advice to support their work in villages.

(iv) Monitoring Arrangements. In the decentralized context of Indonesia, the roles, responsibilities, and reporting structures of project management units at the center and in provinces and districts need to be clearly specified, particularly in relation to ensuring adequate community mobilization; systematic evaluation of facilitator and consultant performance; the appropriateness of technical designs; and the establishment of O&M arrangements, community contributions, transparent accountability procedures, and good governance.

(v) Maintenance Arrangements. While community participation in implementing civil works was very encouraging in all participating villages, more emphasis needs to be placed on establishing adequate maintenance mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of infrastructure investments. More supervision and guidance is required from district administrations, consultants, facilitators, and PIUs to ensure that communities understand the importance of systematic maintenance, receive technical advice on maintenance issues, estimate maintenance costs, and establish appropriate mechanisms to finance and regularly conduct maintenance. Community and district government responsibilities for maintaining roads need to be clearly defined.

Read the full ADB completion report (November 2009)

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