The inaugural Board meetings of the Water Trust Fund (WTF) were conducted in the local Hukumats of Muminabad and Rudaki Districts.
On November 1, 2012, in Muminabad, and on November 5, 2012, in Rudaki, Mr. Zaripov Pirmad and Mr. Tagoev Saidmurod, the respective Chairpersons the District Hukumats presided over the first WTF Board meetings. Ghazi al Kelani, the Country Director of Oxfam in Tajikistan, also participated in the meetings.
The Board of the WTF brings together a wide array of stakeholders who are active in the rural drinking water and sanitation subsector at the district level. The mechanism establishes a permanent coordinating and decision-making body, organised under the authority of the Chairpersons of the Muminabad and Rudaki District Hukumats. Members include representatives of the local governments, civil society organisations and the private sector.
The WTF has been established by way of local Decree; No. 329 in Muminabad, and No. 746 in Rudaki. For each of the districts, a bank account designated for specific use by the WTF has also been opened. Service providers from across both districts will be eligible to apply for funding through the mechanism, expanding access to potable drinking water and improving service delivery to rural populations.
The WTF aims to attract additional funding to the subsector by creating a model designed for district and country-wide up scaling that can be effectively utilised by a broad range of donors and investors and their respective requirements.
The mechanism is designed as a hybrid financing mechanism, combining both funding from the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan (GoRT) with investor financing. Based on the GoRT’s program on the “Improvement of Providing the Population of the Republic of Tajikistan with Pure Drinking Water 2008 – 2020,” the GoRT will provide 30% of the financing for the WTF, while investors will contribute 70%. The initial financial contribution for the WTF will be made by the respective local Hukumats and the Government of Switzerland through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), as part of the TajWSS project.
The WTF concept and the Board’s role as a central component of this mechanism, aims to improve financial sustainability; to strengthen local capacities in management and decision-making; to promote local ownership in the sector; to encourage decentralisation; to advance transparency in decision-making and project selection; to increase operational efficiency in project implementation; and to be easily replicable at the district level in other regions of the country.
The TajWSS Project is funded by SDC and implemented by Oxfam in Tajikistan, in partnership with the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources and the UNDP.
