COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN RURAL ROAD MAINTENANCE: FINNISH EXPERIENCE AND LESSONS FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. Jukka Isotalo

Transcription

1 November 1992 Transport No. RD-13 TRANSPORTATION, WATER AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT THE WORLD BANK COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN RURAL ROAD MAINTENANCE: FINNISH EXPERIENCE AND LESSONS FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Jukka Isotalo Maintenance of rural roads is a major concern in many countries, which has proved very difficult to resolve through conventional approaches. Experience in Finland shows that rural people can be mobilized to maintain their access roads if some financial incentive and an appropriate legal framework are made available by the government. The implication is that more focus should be shifted from the Local Government level further down to the actual users and beneficiaries of the roads. This is particularly relevant to current efforts to improve rural road maintenance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1962, the Government of Finland has successfully promoted rural road maintenance using road cooperatives. A "road cooperative" is a rural road maintenance organization, either with an established legal framework or without legal definition, whereby a road is maintained by the people living along it and not by any level of government. The work of the road cooperatives, with gradually increased government support, has brought more than 97 percent of the affected roads into good, or at least fair, condition. The mobilization of government financial support and the participation of road users were key factors in ensuring sustainable maintenance. Road cooperatives may be applicable to many other countries, and particularly to Sub-Saharan Africa, where there are major deficiencies in rural road condition, and extensive rural road lending will be necessary in the near future. file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (1 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM

2 ROAD COOPERATIVES IN FINLAND With an area 338,000 sq km and 5 million inhabitants, the road system of Finland includes 104,000 km of legally established Cooperative Roads, compared with 77,000 km of Public Roads maintained by the National Road Administration (FinnRA), 6,000 km of city streets and municipal roads maintained by local governments, and about 175,000 km of roads inside private and government properties. A total of 700,000 permanent residents live along the cooperative roads and a further 500,000 people use these roads to visit their summer houses. About 87,000 km of cooperative roads (generally those carrying the traffic of permanent residents or having major public importance) receive public support, through 17,400 separate cooperatives with 392,000 members. Sixteen ferries carry traffic over rivers or lakes along these roads. The average traffic is just 45 vehicles per day, and only 1.2 percent of the roads have an asphaltic pavement. The sources of road maintenance financing for the above 87,000 kilometers of cooperative roads which received public support during the year 1990 were: Government $30 million, Municipalities $40 million, and Road Cooperative members $50 million, for a total of $120 million. Cooperatives are responsible for getting the work done, mainly through paid services of their own members and outside contractors. LEGAL FRAMEWORK All roads which can be used by parties other than one property owner fall under the legislative framework of the Government Act on Private Roads. This act stipulates the right-of-way, the cooperative ownership, and the formula for distribution of maintenance costs amongst the road users and property holders along the road. Participation in the road cooperative is compulsory for property owners who use the road. The cost of road maintenance is shared amongst the members of the cooperative depending on the benefits to each member in the form of the size of the holding and the created traffic (percentage of the usage). Additional fees can be collected from owners/drivers of excessive or very heavy transport. Each road cooperative has to elect a chairman and an individual, or a triumvirate, to manage the maintenance operations. Each cooperative holds an annual general meeting to decide the fees, to accept new members, and to audit the previous year's accounts. FINANCIAL SUPPORT Government support to eligible road cooperatives is channelled through the National Road Administration (FinnRA) from the annual Government Budget allocation. In the past, each cooperative used to prepare a cost estimate for annual road maintenance and submit it to the local road maintenance supervisor of FinnRA. Now the roads are classified to four groups according to traffic and the number of file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (2 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM

3 permanent households etc., and a cost estimate is prepared using a computer program in the local FinnRA office. Road inspections, performed by the same FinnRA supervisor, have been reduced from annual to once every two to three years. Government support is paid in arrears in April into the bank account of the cooperative. The percentage of government support is based on the climatic area and the regional average income. Additional support may be granted depending on the amount of traffic from sources other than the members of the cooperative, income level of the members, exceptional maintenance costs, and excessive length of the road per member. The overall level of government support, as a percentage of actual maintenance costs, has been gradually increased over the years, as part of general rural development support and aid to national underdeveloped regions. The administrative costs of managing the cooperative roads support is about $1 million, or $60 per road. TECHNICAL SUPPORT Government support is conditional upon a road being in acceptable condition for motorized traffic in both summer and winter. The condition of all roads is determined through a visual inspection by a local FinnRA road supervisor. Three major factors are scored during the quality evaluation: Road surface: surface material quality and quantity, camber, rutting, corrugation and potholes. Drainage: ditches, culverts and bridges. Shoulders and verges: clearing of vegetation and visibility. The total sum of scoring is between 0 to 10. If a road gets 5 points (4 for the ones with lesser traffic), the quality is fair, and above 7 points it is good. An important factor in improving the condition of the cooperative roads, and transferring road maintenance know-how into rural areas, has been the annual meetings between the management of each road cooperative and the local FinnRA road supervisor. These supervisors have, on average, three years technical college education after high school and 20 years work experience with roads. QUALITY OF COOPERATIVE ROADS The quality control system has been enforced since The length of roads in poor condition has been less than 3 percent over this period. By the year 1989, the length of the roads in fair condition was reduced from 35 to 25 percent, and the percentage of good roads had risen to more than 70 percent of the total cooperative road network supported by the government. The quality improvement is mainly due to the increased use of crushed stone surface material. The quality of cooperative roads has thus reached the target level, and additional government financial inputs are not justified. RURAL ROAD MAINTENANCE IN AFRICA file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (3 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM

4 In Sub-Saharan Africa the length of the classified rural road network is more than 600,000 km, requiring US$1.65 billion in annual maintenance and rehabilitation spending. A recent survey (1) indicates that 55 percent of these roads are in poor condition, 30 percent are in fair and only 15 percent in good condition. Despite the presently poor state of rural roads, many African governments are looking for funds to build additional rural roads in order to open up new areas for agriculture and development. In the Bank's Africa Region business plan for , 31 infrastructure projects and 6 agricultural projects have rural road and/or transport components, with maintenance as an important consideration. PRESENT COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION The lessons learned from rural roads programs in Africa have shown systemic shortcomings due to insufficient focus on road maintenance and community involvement (2). A recent Bank-wide review of rural road maintenance projects found widespread problems in project effectiveness and sustainability, and called for prescriptions of good practice to be followed in sector and project work (4). Experience from other community participatory projects of the Bank are also of great importance to rural road lending: Firstly, local participation has in most cases been implemented through local governments, which typically have a very weak revenue basis, meager technical skills, insufficient support of the Central Government and, in some cases, a lack of commitment to village level road problems. Secondly, the users rather than a weak bureaucracy are better able to manage local operative assignments (6). Experience indicates that sustainability of projects, and in a large sense of development, cannot be achieved without mobilizing the beneficiaries and their institutions. Priority should therefore be given to engaging participation of the beneficiaries and strengthening of their institutions, and not so much to those of the government personnel. Lessons learned from traditional systems like the Umunganda in Rwanda and the Burungi-Bwansi in Uganda indicate that more sustainable resource mobilization can take place at a lower grass roots level under traditional chief or village head (3). Thirdly, given the severe lack of resources at the local level, rural road development will require central funding and commitment. Experience has proved a small centralized agency, acting as a focal point for policy development, overall planning, funding and overseeing regional organizations, to be the most effective institutional arrangement for delivering these funds (2). Recommendations for the disbursement of these funds have included multi-tiered planning and programming systems, allowing the participation of national, sectoral, regional and local level communities. Finally, locally administered fees, based on the benefit accrued through the use of the road, may be a more acceptable and suitable form of revenue for road maintenance than local government taxes based on land ownership. Options for revenue mobilization for rural road maintenance include financing from: (a) central government, (b) external sources, multilateral or bilateral, (c) local revenues and (d) revenues based on the use of the road concerned (5). While the first three of these sources have been discussed in a number of reports, more attention should be focussed on the availability and collection of revenues of file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (4 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM

5 the users and property holders of a specific road. In summary, one of the main reasons for the poor maintenance record of rural roads in Sub-Saharan Africa is the attempt to consolidate the rural road rehabilitation and maintenance only at the local government level, instead of approaching the basic traditional units of the society, that is, chieftaincies, villages and extended families. These grass roots entities have vested interests in the well-being of their own roads. LESSONS FROM FINNISH EXPERIENCE It is possible to create a year-round trafficable rural road network as a cooperative effort of community participation and government support. The following preconditions are of great importance: A legal framework to identify the roads selected for support, to ensure that all beneficiaries are involved and free riders are eliminated, and to establish accountable entities to manage the selected roads. Government incentives in the form of monetary support for individual roads to assist maintenance organizations, and to ensure their accountability. In some African countries, because of the negative attitudes associated with cooperatives, other forms of organization may be preferable. The initiation of a road maintenance undertaking may well start as an informal group. Allocations of government support have to be subject to technical inspections on the trafficability of the roads. Inspection assignments should be delegated to provincial or local government technical staff. If legally possible, government funding should not be restricted to procurement of materials or contractual works, but should also be used to support the road maintenance works of the road community members. Both mechanized and labor-based methods of work should qualify for support. Regular visits of government technical staff, and meetings with local road community members, are fruitful means of transferring technical knowledge to the grass roots level. Ideally, the head of the cooperative should participate in the practical road works. The attention of the management is especially needed in the inspection of the condition of the road throughout the year, for example, on a monthly basis, and more frequently during the rainy season. A well organized cooperative may also accumulate funds to mobilize equipment or larger labor crews to restore gravel surface material and structural defects once every three to four years. TO LEARN MORE 1. UNTACDA II, "Roads Sub-Sector Working group Strategy Paper", December. 2. Riverson, John, Juan Gaviria and Sydney Thriscutt, World Bank, Technical Paper 141, "Rural Roads in Sub-Saharan Africa". file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (5 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM

6 3. Nagle, W.J. and S. Ghose, "Community Participation in World Bank Supported Projects", Strategic Planning and Review, The World Bank. 4. OED, "Rural Roads Maintenance - Review of Completed World Bank Operations", June, OED Report No Gaviria, Juan, "Mobilizing Financial Resources for Rural Roads in SSA", Background Paper, Sub-Saharan Africa Transportation Program SSATP/RTTP, November. 6. Paul, Samuel, "Community Participation in Development Projects", World Bank Discussion Paper No 6. file:///o /PUBLIC/twu_xweb/transpor/publicat/td-rd13.htm (6 of 6)07/17/ :38:34 AM