Topic Guide: Corruption in Water and Sanitation Sector

Preventing corruption in the water sector also involves improving financial and procurement rules, including enforcing stricter standards, coherent rules and increased supervision of disbursements, competitive bidding and contract implementation. Different tools exist to curb collusion and bid rigging in tender procedures. Transparency in the selection of contractors can be promoted by providing easy access to information through a more systematic use of the internet and e-procurement. This helps minimise interactions between public officials and bidding companies and pre-empts the development of corrupt networks.  

Tendering companies can also be required to commit to a no-bribe policy and be subject to debarment procedures if they are found to engage in fraud or corruption. Strengthened due diligence measures are also instrumental to ensure fair competition for water contracts. In particular, given the large investments in the sector, export credit agencies, commercial banks and international financial institutions have a key role to play by integrating anti-bribery provisions in their due diligence requirements.[1]

Integrity pacts have also been used in some water projects, such as the Greater Karachi Water Supply Scheme in Pakistan, whereby a government and all bidders for a public sector contract agree that neither the government nor the contractor shall pay, offer, demand, or accept a bribe or collude with competitors to obtain the contract.[2] Such commitments can be monitored by civil society organisations or other independent parties. Bidders are also required to disclose all commissions paid to contractors.

Civil society can also play an important role in the process from the design stage of water projects to the monitoring of contract implementation. Citizens can also be involved in decision-making processes for the development of new water infrastructure to inform project design. Reporting mechanisms provide other avenues for citizens participation, and they can use ICT to monitor and report problems and issues related to water and sanitation services. The Mobile for Water (M4W) Programme[3] in Uganda allows citizens to use text messages to report faulty pumps or other problems with the water supply, which then gets sent directly to the responsible mechanic. However, these programmes only work if complaints are leading to improvements, as can be seen with the crowdsourcing platforms used in Daraja, Tanzania, which provided citizens with digital platforms from which to complain about the lack of access to water or to report problems to engineers responsible for maintenance,[4] but citizens did not get positive responses from the authorities.[5] These platforms contributed to reorient government water policy and increase maintenance and infrastructure budgets consistently for five years.