Mali: EWP/WASH National Steering Committee contributes to National public hearing event

Presentation of the Steering Committee's contribution by the president Mr Dounantié Dao.

Credit: WaterAid

18 January 2010

The 14th edition of Mali's governmental National Public Hearing, chaired by the Prime Minister, was held on Thursday 10 December 2009.

To promote governance and transparency the Government of Mali have been running these hearings at a national level since 1995. 

To run alongside the national level hearing WaterAid and its partners in Mali have initiated local public hearings in its project areas since 2007. This year a written report and documentary showed good progress, with communities and local authorities seeing an improved relationship with strengthened accountability.

This year's National Public Hearing was started by a presentation by the Minister of Justice on progress against 2008 recommendations. Subsequently, 8 civil society organisations, including the EWP/WASH National Steering Committee, gave their contributions to the event. This included a focus on: access to water and sanitation, lack of governance, road insecurity, child trafficking, land issues, corruption and violations of human rights.

The EWP/WASH committee appealed to the Government during its presentation to improve its efforts in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. It particularly stressed the necessity to bring the national budget allocated to sanitation to 1.5% against the current 0.02% allocation. The various presentations were followed by 20 citizen interventions, all related to the above mentioned aspects.

A positive outcome was that no intervention was ignored by the Government and questions for follow up were all transferred to the National Commission. But the major result of the 2009 edition of the National Public Hearing came at the end, where it was agreed that future editions would be delocalised and organised by civil society. This is also great news for WaterAid signaling that its advocacy efforts for the institutionalisation of the local public hearings are becoming effective.

The EWP/WASH National Steering Committee's first participation in the national event was also a success, bringing an opportunity to work with the National Commission on recommendations made at the hearing.

For more information, contact Abdourahmane Coulibaly Communication and Campaigns Officer. Email: AbdourahmaneCoulibaly@wateraid.org