After SONA, Liberia WASH Sector Once Again Loses Financing Hope, CSO Calls for More WASH Financing
Liberia: – The Liberia WASH Sector is not prioritized by the government and remains poorly and loosely financed.
The lack of adequate safe water supply, sanitation, and hygiene for all Liberians has severe public health implications on the lives of most of the population of Liberia, particularly those living in the rural parts of the country, as well as those living in slum communities in urban cities. Nearly half of the population of Liberia is ruthlessly affected by inadequate WASH service delivery. This is one of contributing factors that continue to affect the people’s livelihood. Women and Girls continue to bear the greater burden of the situation. They spend nearly half of their time fetching water for daily domestic use. Yet, the government continues to pay very tiny attention to the sector, especially from the context of financing for improving access to equitable WASH services for all Liberians.
The government of Liberia is yet to show real commitment or political will that translates into adequate budgetary support to ensure equitable WASH for all Liberians. The lack of good fiscal support to the WASH sector continues to impede the progress of the sector and citizen well-being, including the achievement of SDG-6 and the GOL’s PAPD.
Less than 10 percent of Liberians have access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services, according to the Joint Monitoring Program report (JMP) 2017 (WHO & UNICEF, 2017)1. The report asserts that securing access to safe water and adequate sanitation for all would go a long way in reducing water-related infection, disease, and death and help to improve girls’ enrollment in school, and also provide the opportunity for women to spend more time engaged in more productive activities that can contribute to the country’s economic development. But, the government and its partners’ commitment to improving WASH sector financing continues to experience a very deep downward trend, thereby adversely impeding the achievement of national and international development agendas such as PAPD and SDG-6.
To improve WASH financing, CHESS-Liberia, through its Executive Director John Alexander Nyahn Jr, is calling on policymakers, especially the executive and legislative branches, to ensure a WASH standalone budget line in the national budget and establish a WASH committee instead of a WASH Legislative caucus. Presently the WASH Caucus is an ad hoc committee with membership based on voluntarism which does not have the same legal status as standing committees on health, education, finance, and others that are duly established by legislative rules. CHESS believes that this is one of the ways that the government can adequately prioritize WASH sector development.
No budget item in the national budget as of Fiscal Year (FY) 2015-2022 targeting capital investment in WASH, even after establishing the National WASH Commission (NWASHC) in 2018.
The Second African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene—AfricaSan+5—was held in Durban, South Africa, from February 18–21, 2008, with firm resolutions to place sanitation and hygiene at the top of the development agenda in Africa. This conference gave birth to the “eThekwini Declaration and AfricaSan’s
Action Plan,” which required the African governments to contribute 0.05% of their Gross Domestic products to financing WASH. To date, GOL’s commitment to allotting 0.5% of its national GDP annually is not respected by policymakers, thereby impeding political will in both the legislative and executive branches of government to implement the commitment. This, therefore, means that GOL places an insufficient premium on WASH financing. The Sector Investment Plan (SIP) projected $444.2 million as the total financing requirement for FY2015-2018. Still, GOL only contributed 1.2% ($5 million) of the $444.2 million required, while the DPs contributed 25.14% ($111.7 million) of the same $444.2m establishing a total investment gap of $327.5 million. GoL and DPs’ joint contributions amounted to an insufficient $116.7 million, representing an inferior 26.27%. This is worrisome and explains why Liberia is not sound enough to achieve SDG-6. To curb this, the government and its partners must effect robust fiscal policy measures focusing on WASH sector governance reform, WASH institution capacity strengthening, and investment in capital WASH projects.
