MASTER'S THESIS - SuSanA

7 Presentation of the institutional framework
• Implementation of government decision towards aggregation of water utilities „into few, larger
service providers“ in order to realise the „economics of scale“ to increase efficiency (MPWT 2011).
• Establishment of a national training and certification programme for all utilities.
Additionally, the private sector participation is mentioned as a key element of the sector startegy to „bring a
more commercial approach to infrastructure provision“ through competition and to reduce political
intervention (MPWT 2011). Incentives shall be provided for private companies to get involved in the water
sector. In general, the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector was recognised as important for “economic
and social development of the country” (Blaschke et al. 2011) and it can be hoped that the rural areas will
be considered more in the future planning.
Even though the paper should address the problems of drinking water supply and wastewater treatment
and discharge, the wastewater problems of the rural areas stay neglected.
7.1.2 Masterplan for water sector
The Masterplan for the Albanian water sector has the goal to identify priorities of the sector until 2040 and
is financed by KfW. The development of the Masterplan is still going on at the moment. While the company
IC Consulenten is working on the water supply part, the wastewater part is covered by the company IGR
Engineers. All given information are gathered from the Masterplan Interception report- Final (November
2011, (Blaschke et al. 2011)), meetings with Andrian Vaso from IC (December, 13 th 2011) and Karlheinz
Stransky from IGR (December, 14 th 2011) and a meeting of GIZ and IC Consulenten at the GIZ office (January,
19 th 2012) to prepare the prioritisation criteria.
The development of the Masterplan follows several steps or phases. In the 1 st phase a baseline report was
prepared that gives an overview over the sector issues, namely financial, social and governmental issues.
The baseline report was finished in 2011.
The 2 nd and 3 rd phase are going on in parallel. In the 2 nd phase a description of the current situation of
infrastructure conditions is prepared. Albania has 58 utilities and is divided in the Masterplan in areas
covered by utilities and areas that are not covered (OJ, what stands for „out of jurisdiction“). Data will be
transferred into GIS format.
A presentation of future needs is prepared as the 3 rd phase. The needs will be figured out by the use of
questionnaires. Questionnaires were sent to all utilities and all OJ at the beginning of 2012. The
questionnaires for the utilities shall help to collect data for the five main fields drinking water supply,
wastewater discharge, financial, social and environmental aspects. Questionnaires for the OJs will be sent to
the municipalities/communes and contain less questions. This study shall be finished by mid-February 2012.
In the 4 th phase, the development of water demand schemes of Albania and the preparation of a table for
prioritisation are targeted, divided into short-term (until 2015), mid-term (until 2020) and long-term (until
2040) actions. In January and February 2012, the consultants that work on the Masterplan met 23
stakeholders of the water sector to ask for their ideas concerning how to set up a scheme to evaluate the
necessity of actions and the necessary criteria (e.g. water quality and supply hours, health risks,
environmental risks, costs of measure). The prioritisation process consists of (Blaschke et al. 2011):
• Conduction of availability analysis; data collection and verification
• Identification of problem areas and assessment of urgency
• Elaboration and evaluation of competing solutions or projects.
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