Turkey Key Note Address

Anatalya, Turkey, April 10-17, 1996

His Excellency Minister of Agriculture and Food of Albania, Excellencies, distinguished members of parliament of Egypt, dear colleagues, distinguished guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen:

I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this important event, the seminar on "Participatory Irrigation Management" co-organized by the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank and the General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSI). It is a great honor for me to host you on behalf of DSI. I would like to express my sincere thanks to EDI for selecting DSI and Antalya Turkey as the seminar site.

Through the transfer of operation and maintenance responsibility to users, or participation in irrigation management, DSI anticipates that first, farmers will be challenged to improve their own irrigation service and will develop a ìsense of ownership". Second, there will be less financial burden on government, particularly in terms of operation and maintenance costs. As the next step, we want farmers to involve themselves actively in planning and design, in addition to operation and maintenance, of irrigation systems. One important issue is the challenge of making these schemes sustainable. I would like to see vigorous efforts spent in monitoring the performance of these systems and we have to do whatever is needed to strengthen governments' capability to fulfill this monitoring and counseling task.

Before saying a few words about our transfer experience, let me brief you about DSI. The General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSI) is the main executive agency of the Government of Turkey for the nation's overall water resources planning, execution and operation. It was established in 1953 as a legal entity and is now under the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. DSI is a three level organization. Its top management is the General Directorate office in Ankara. The department offices in Ankara constitute the secondary level. The tertiary level consists of the field or regional directorate offices throughout Turkey. There are 25 regional directorates of DSI. One of them is the Antalya Region which serves this part of the country.

DSI so far has constructed 168 high dams including one of the world's largest dams, the Atatürk dam. It has also built 99 hydroelectric power plants with an average annual electric generation capacity of 36,354 Gwh and supplied irrigation network for 2.02 million hectares of land. DSI has also protected 1.2 millon hectares and 4,200 settlements against floods and supplied 1,791hm3 of drinking and industrial water. DSI also has been responsible for operating and maintaining its facilities. This practice is not too strange to any of us. We are also aware of the fact that responsibility of operating and maintaining state-owned systems especially irrigation schemes has been getting more and more costly every year. Furthermore, the government can no longer allocate sufficient funds for proper O&M services. Collection of O&M fees are declining and these revenues are not used for meeting the O&M requirements of the schemes. This leads to the deterioration of the systems. We had to do something to mitigate this problem while our systems were still in good shape and operable. Therefore, we have been eager to learn from other countries' experiences regarding a more participatory and sustainable operation and maintenance strategy.

Until mid-1993 we were dealing with small scale transfers encouraged by our legislation and were also trying to find sounder cost-recovery strategies. Mr. Joma Mohamadi, the task manager of a World Bank funded drainage and on-farm development project, visited my office. I mentioned our legislation and the on-going transfer of minor remote schemes. Why not transfer larger schemes, Mr. Mohamadi asked. I replied that once we finish the small ones, we will gradually think about the rest. But Mr. Mohamadi insisted. We used the training component of the Bank loan to send key DSI staff to Mexico to learn about the irrigation management transfer program going on there. Our colleagues came back with diverse but enthusiastic impressions.

In 1993 we declared an action plan which called for a gradual transfer of nearly 150,000 ha per year until the year 2000 when the cumulative total would reach one million hectares. Beyond all expectations, in 1994-1995, DSI was flooded by farmers' transfer demands. At present the total area transferred has reached an incredible figure of 1,150,000 hectares. This figure was aimed for the year 2000 and we have already achieved it within two and a half years.

Among the major factors behind this accelerated transfer was DSI staff's outstanding efforts to promote the transfer model among the farmers both before and after being exposed to other countriesí experience for example Mexicoís. The World Bank's very positive and encouraging role in transfer was also very important, particularly the role of Mr. Mohamadi. We now call the era prior to mid-1993 "Before Mohamadi" and post 1993 as "After Mohamadi". I would personally like to thank him for his very valuable contribution and cooperation.

Now, we have reached a level where we have to be even more careful. We are increasingly more cautious about the process, and sustainability is an important concern after a successful transfer. So we need to look beyond engineering and we need to let irrigation consumers involve themselves actively in every stage of project, not just operation and maintenance. I think such self-governing systems will prove to be quite efficient in developing countries and I feel we are obliged to monitor the performance of these systems, and learn and then innovate.

Last but not the least, I would like to wish all of you a fruitful seminar and I hope we will all gain from the views expressed here. On behalf of DSI I want to thank all those who contributed to the organization of this gathering and I wish you a pleasant stay in Antalya.

- Raif Ozenci, Director General, DSI