Project partnership agreements with government on human resources and funding are critical to effective implementation and sustainability. While initially the project national project implementation unit had issues on staffing, procurement, and implementation, these were resolved with incremental additional staffing, recruitment of a small core team of individual consultants, and restructuring to a subproject management unit. The non-recruitment of a social development specialist; to be funded by the government, affected the Gender action plan monitoring and planned survey update. The executing and implementing agencies (EA/IA) demonstrated government commitment by providing additional project funding in 2019 to cover the costs of the O&M contract, which included all the related customer awareness activities and establishment of a tariff billing and collection system. The state-owned water utility, Bee Timor-Leste, will now be addressing the staffing needs and funding for the District Department for Water Supply and Sanitation in Manatuto after expiration of the O&M contract. The EA and IA could have been more proactive in engaging higher-level authorities to resolve operational and funding issues to ensure the sustainability of the Pante Macassar water supply system.
District Capitals Water Supply Project