Haïti - Building the technical reference frame on water and sanitation

DINEPA, National Directorate for Water Supply and Sanitation in Haiti, has entrusted IOWater with drafting national Directives and technical guidelines in the field of Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation.

Faced with the diversity of stakeholders in the design and implementation of  infrastructure projects, DINEPA should achieve the harmonization of practices and materials.

To do this, IOWater is drafting guidelines that prescribe the minimum technical requirements for each type of structure, but also guides with a more educational goal, which emphasize a practice both technically valid and suited to the Haitian context.

For the sanitation sector for instance, hundreds of latrine models have been designed by many national and international stakeholders for decades. This diversity of structures, not always best suited technically, makes it particularly difficult to adopt a national strategy, which aims to increase the rate of access to quality sanitary structures in a country severely affected by cholera.

In drinking water supply the diversity of materials and equipment used, the many customary measurement units, or even the methods used by many private, public, national and international operators complicate operation and maintenance.

This also means that the entire DWSS sector should better control the master plans and their financial aspects and ensure quality results and, ultimately, the quality of supplied water.

About sixty documents have already been produced and submitted to the Steering Committee of the project financed by UNICEF. The following steps, in addition to writing the numerous remaining technical papers, are the dissemination of the guidelines, the training of future users of these documents, or the adaptation of the recommendations regarding changes in the sector, that are many and quickin Haiti.

Thus the local stakeholders will gradually develop the sector ’s economic activity, avoiding the pitfalls of bad workmanship due to ignorance or lack of technical and regulatory framework. This action is actively involved in the construction of the water sector and its development.