Public Works Projects in brief:

The Public Works Project (Pwp) Has Been Created In The Context Of Yemen’s Social Safety Net, Aiming To Mitigate The Adverse Effects Of The Economic Reform Program Set In Motion During 1995.

It Was Established In 1996  By Law No. (36)  And The Prime Minister Decree No. (3) Of The Year 1996 For  The Formation Of The Pwp Steering Committee And Defining Its Key Tasks.

PWP objectives:

The establishment of the Public Works Projects came as a pressing necessity to mitigate the adverse effects of the Economical, Financial and Administrative Reform Program as a model for efficient delivery of basic infrastructure services within well defined and transparent procedures.

PWP Main Objectives

• Creating job opportunities for skilled and unskilled laborers.
• Providing infrastructure service projects for the poor and deprived communities
• Improving the economical and environmental conditions of the poor
• Developing the local contracting and consulting Industry.
• Enhancing community participation in the development process.
  
  

PWP gained the donors confidence: 

When the PWP started its activity in the year 1996 as a new experiment in Yemen in preparation, controls, methods of distribution and implementation procedures of projects, the then financial resources and the donor agencies of the PWP were limited, where the allocated amounts for the first stage (1996-2000) did not exceed USD 30.49 million granted by two international organizations namely the WB in a loan amounting to USD 23.14 million and the Netherlands assistance an amount of USD 1.98 million in addition to the contribution of the Yemen government an amount of USD 2.79 million and the beneficiaries contribution amounting to USD 2.48 million.

Despite the limited financial resources of PWP in the first stage, yet it was able to complete 453 projects at a total cost of USD 24.4 million distributed in seven sectors specifically: education, health, water, sanitation, paving and beautification, agriculture and irrigation, vocational training and social affairs. These projects benefited 2.3 million individuals and provided around 66 thousand job opportunities.

Positive results:

The positive results achieved by the PWP in its first stage exceeded expectations and surprised donors especially in light of the limited financial resources, and that they were completely used pursuant to the economic feasibility without any deviation encouraging donors to continue support to PWP and funding the second stage (1999-2003).

However, funding this time was in big amounts and new donors joined where an amount of USD 116 million was provided by six donor international organizations namely: WB, OPEC, US assistance , Italian grant , French grant and the Dutch assistance in addition to the contribution of the government and beneficiaries.

During this stage, the PWP was able to complete 1466 projects at a total cost of USD 93 million with an increase of 1030 projects and the number of beneficiaries increased over the second stage to 7.2 million individuals and 244 thousand job opportunities were created.

Confidence of donors:

These successes achieved by PWP were positively reflected on the standing of PWP leading to increased number of donors particularly as it became evident to them that the PWP management unit could efficiently and effectively handle the allocated amounts with high transparency through the implementation of projects according to the best international standards.

These successes led to Third Phase, an amount of USD 405 million was provided with an increase of USD 289 million over the second stage and the number of financiers from the donors community increased to 24 international organizations  while the total number of projects implemented by PWP since the inception of the third stage until the end of December 2016, amounted to 2,981 projects with a total cost of USD 368 million distributed over all 22 governorates and the sectors PWP works in.
The number of beneficiaries from these projects amounted to 8.9 million and 850 thousand job opportunities were provided and thereby the PWP was successful to become one of the active government tools to eradicate poverty and provision of job opportunities and basic services to the most needy segments of the society and improvement of the economic livelihoods and infrastructure for the poor communities.

Stage four:

The PWP management unit also proved its capacity to develop PWP  type of interventions to become a national active player positively contributing in the development process encouraging the donor community to finance stage four of PWP where PWP obtained additional grants and loans from the WB and the Arab and Kuwaiti Funds.

Coping And Development:

Factors of PWP Success

• The competence of the PWP Management Unit by competitively recruiting qualified and motivated staff.
• Adopting a balanced strategy and transparent procedures.
• Developing comprehensive MIS and Financial Systems.
• Continuous evaluation of project performance at all levels technical and administrative including Quality Control  
• Having strong relations with all stakeholders starting from communities, local authorities, line ministries and donors.
• Monitoring & evaluating staff performance.
• The staunch support of the Steering Committee in facilitating decision making process and obstacles.
• The PWP’s in-exhaustive endeavors to deliver services and contribute to development all over the country especially where the need is immense and poverty is high.

Modern and Sophisticated Systems

The PWP developed a comprehensive and sophisticated Management Information System MIS. The system was designed and developed by the IT specialist in cooperation with PWP key staff.

The MIS is being continuously developed and updated to cope with increasing activities of the PWP.

The MIS main characteristics are as follows:-

• Monitoring each and every project right from the beginning i.e. registration, approval, tendering, evaluation, awarding contract, implementation and finally handing over.
• Issuing bills of quantities and specifications for every project.
• Contacting with selected contractors.
• Analyzing bi-weekly progress reports from supervising engineers
• Identifying problems that may hinder implementation process of any project.
• Preparing annual and quarterly investment plans.
• Preparing Financial Management Reports (FMR’) in accordance with the World Bank withdrawal procedures
• Data base for contactors and consultant engineers whose experiences and capabilities are periodically evaluated.
• Preparing brochures and annual publication for the activities undertaken.

It is worth mentioning that in spite of the complicated nature of implementing small projects scattered all over the country, strict monitoring is achieved through

• Strictly enforcing submission of bi-weekly reports to the head office electronically
• Using computerized financial system.

Geographic Information system:

The PWP management unit sought early to introduce the geographical information system (GIS) to use the potentials of this system where each the sub projects coordinates implemented are projected at the governorate, district and sub-district maps in cooperation with the central statistics organization.

Recently. , PWP management worked on the development of multiple applications using available data in the PWP database and data exchanged with other entities to make use of this system in the planning, enquiries and project implementation follow up processes.