The Hindu : WB team to discuss new project with municipal commissioners

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 23, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka

WB team to discuss new project with municipal commissioners

By Divya Sreedharan

BANGALORE April 22. The Karnataka Urban Water and Sanitation Sector Improvement Project will be the focus of discussions (from April 23 to May 3) between a visiting World Bank team, the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) and commissioners of the Gulbarga, Belgaum, Hubli-Dharwad municipal councils, which will participate in the project.

But the project preparation, says a KUIDFC paper, involves appointing consultants for engineering and environmental studies and consultancies on financial, social and institutional/sector development.

Details about the nature of the consultants (whether wholly Indian companies or if Indian subsidiaries of U.S./U.K./French companies) have been omitted.

The bank is funding the project, and though the long-term vision is to ``turn the urban water and sanitation sector into a high quality, sustainable service," the medium-term intention is to achieve a water and sanitation sector service model "provided by autonomous, customer-responsive and commercially oriented utilities through effective public-private partnerships.''

The paper says that to make these aspects a reality, the water and sanitation sector in the State needs an urban water policy that will create a sound, regulatory, institutional and legal framework, and among other things, enable the private sector to be involved in the sector services.

In fact, KUIDFC officials say that a Government Order has been issued to facilitate these changes.

But are the people of Gulbarga, Belgaum and Hubli-Dharwad (the ``demonstration areas'' for the project's first phase) consulted in this process?

Past experience indicates otherwise. For example, when the Government decided to privatise the power sector, it appointed an internationally renowned consultant who came up with a strategy paper.

Then experts discussed the paper. But there was no public consultation till the Government decided on a strategy. Then a draft paper was published ``to inform consumers.''

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