Opm report Template version 5

3.2Impact through assets

The potential effects of PASP assets on resilience are described below. Key processes related to the selection, design and oversight of assets were widely recognised to be inadequate, leading to very poor quality assets, a finding confirmed by Irish Aid and IIED, 2016. It is expected that the effects of PASP assets on coping and adaptive capacities will be negligible as a result.

3.2.1Effects on coping capacity

As the table below shows, most of the requirements for effective impact through assets have not been met. The processes of selection, design and monitoring of the infrastructure produced by the programme are inadequate, as is investment in capital inputs in terms of materials and equipment. The resulting assets are therefore of limited durability and of low quality.

By design, PASP has a selection process that duplicates the process for the development of local infrastructure plans developed by district officials. Instead of relying on district infrastructure development plans, both the INAS delegation and the local administration engage in a separate process to select assets to be built from a broad list of options set out in the manual of operations. They then ask communities to select one asset from the list. This process is nominally participatory, engaging a number of stakeholders at different levels (e.g. chefes do posto, conselho consultivos, etc.). However, this process, as outlined in the manual, was not found to be followed in practice, given the scarcity of resources, and there was no evidence of district ownership of the PWP asset identification and selection process a finding confirmed by Irish Aid and IIED, 2016.

As such assets selected through the PASP process are not necessarily part of district development plans, where these exist, or local infrastructure plans, and PASP infrastructure may not take into account the priorities of local authorities or climate change adaptation plans, where these are in place. This reduces incentives for the allocation of scarce technical resources to asset creation and undermines a sense of local government ownership, which is essential for asset implementation and maintenance.

Communities do not receive significant support from the ‘district services’² (serviços distritais) in the design of the works. In practice, PASP beneficiaries are left on their own to design the works with very limited experience and skills. Moreover, the technicians from the district services in Chibuto mentioned that PASP works do not comply with the minimum technical specifications for the construction of public infrastructure. They attributed this to the scarcity and low quality of materials, equipment and inputs and the difficulty of creating assets using labour- rather than capital intensive methods.

Group leaders are in charge of worksite management and are chosen by traditional leaders/local authorities. These leaders are beneficiaries with little or no technical experience or training on site management and construction. They are in charge of keeping the muster roll, assigning activities, guaranteeing workers’ safety, etc. The extent to which group leaders can effectively perform these duties, in the absence of significant training and support, depends entirely on their skills, motivation and experience. In the cases observed this was not enough to guarantee basic management and safety standards, or the creation of technically adequate assets.

Table : Analysis of requirements for PASP to impact coping capacity through assets

Requirements for impact on coping capacity	Req. met?	Comments
Assets appropriately selected for relevance in local context	Partially	PASP asset selection process not informed by local development priorities but by community preferences from a limited set of predefined options.
Assets correctly designed, located and implemented	No	Limited or no technical support is provided for the design and implementation of the assets which do not conform to PASP or district technical specifications.
Adequate technical inputs in design and implementation	No	Limited or no technical support is provided for the design and implementation of the works.
Adequate management/administration skills	No	Beneficiaries self-manage worksites without significant support from INAS or the district services.
Adequate capital inputs	No	Capital inputs are not sufficient to produce quality assets.
Labour inputs consistent with technical requirements	No	Adoption of labour intensive techniques and the limited number of working days available was not consistent with district level technical requirements for asset creation.
Quality control of final assets	No	There is no formal mechanism to monitor the quality of assets constructed. Only when technicians from the services are interested in the projects do they undertake a final quality control, and most of the time they do not.
Local government/community ownership and management of assets	No	Ownership by local authorities is compromised by the fact that projects are perceived as belonging to INAS rather than the district, assets created are not district development priorities and the quality of the assets is low. Community ownership unknown.
Equitable access to asset benefits	?	Equitability of access unknown although benefits are likely to be minimal.
Monitoring of asset functionality and usage	No	There is no monitoring of asset functionality or usage.

3.2.2Effects on adaptive capacity

In addition to the requirements for coping capacity, PASP assets need functioning markets to increase adaptive capacity, so that households can capitalise asset related benefits. The extent to which this requirement is met will depend on local circumstances, and such analysis goes beyond the reach of this study.