The current situation in Yemen cast a negative shadow on the Public Works Project (PWP). In 2015, donors suspended their funding, resulting in a total halt of all PWP’s development activities. The humanitarian situation, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate reaching a critical stage, and peoples’ needs for basic services, decent livelihoods, and new sources for income continued to grow and intensify. This dire situation prompted the World Bank, late 2016, to approve funding for emergency operations in Yemen, including the Yemen Emergency Crises Response Project (YECRP), administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The PWP was chosen as one of the implementation partners for the YECRP, a project aiming at creating short-term income generation and employment opportunities, while the poorest communities will benefit from restored socio-economic community assets, as implementation capacity is maintained for service provision programs such as the PWP.
The Public Works Project: A success.
The PWP is seen as a reliable and credible partner by the donor community. Thus, the World bank,s (WB) selected the PWP to partner in the implementation of the Bank,s funded YECRP, and channeled the funding through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). WB has already allocated an amount totaling US$ 85 Million for the project covering the period from August 2016 to June 2019. This amount has been reallocated to Yemen’s various districts based on the distress index, which includes a number of parameters: population, density of IDPs, the community’s urgent priorities, and food insecurity, based on indicators and data regularly collected and updated by UN agencies.
Despite the dire situation in Yemen, the PWP overcame the challenges and adapted to this difficult situation. It continued to perform development efforts and deliver projects to all regions of Yemen with no exception, a matter that can readily be seen in the ground.
The PWP has succeeded in implementing projects closely connected to day-to-day lives of people, such as: water projects, rehabilitation of schools, access roads paving, sanitation, agricultural land protection. While providing services to the public, these subprojects also aim at creating income-generation work opportunities for skilled and unskilled labor - a very important contribution given the current circumstances in Yemen.
Support for Infrastructure by the PWP
Under the YECRP and the USAID projects, the PWP builds community assets, improves community infrastructure, and at the same time, generates short-term employment opportunities by implementing labor-intensive small infrastructure projects. This is done through a partnership with private sector local contractors. Subprojects include, for example, rain-water harvesting, agriculture land and irrigation, stone-paving of access roads, water supply and sanitation, and rehabilitation of schools,etc. Subprojects are approved for implementation on the basis of priority needs as identified by targeted local communities.
In implementing subprojects, the PWP takes into consideration the local community’s capacity for operating and maintaining the infrastructure supported without the need for outside expertise. The type of interventions and subprojects had been predetermined in consultation with the World bank
Expected Outcomes (for the Parent Fund and the Additional Fund).
The WB sets expected project development objective for the end of the YECRP implement (End of June 2019). This was based on an intensive plan development by the PWP’s Management Unit, most importantly: -
Building community assets and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure to contribute to the achievement of economic and social benefits and to facilitate delivery of basic services. At the same time, the labor-intensive subprojects will achieve the requirement of utilizing at least 35% of the cost for cash for work activities. It’s expected that the implementation will generate 2,000,000 work/day for about 118,000 direct beneficiaries and direct participation of labor. 1,100,000 persons are expected to be direct beneficiaries.
Utilization of Funding
Reflecting high efficiency and transparency, the Parent Fund for the YECRP has been completed and closed on August 31, 2018. The budget of US$ 14.765 million has been fully utilized, with 214 subprojects completed (constituting community assets in important sectors such as: education - rehabilitation of schools - paving and improvement, water supply and sanitation ,etc.) representing 83% of total budget, a positive indicator of efficiency in fund utilization by the PWP’s Management Unit.
Under the Additional Funding, 980 subprojects have been contracted costing US$56.23 million, out of which 816 costing US$46.558 i.e. 83% have been completed and handed over to beneficiaries. These subprojects include, education - rehabilitation of schools - paving and improvement, water supply and sanitation, agriculture…etc.)
The 164 ongoing subprojects will be completed by the end of March 2019.
This brings the total disbursements to US$72.027 million, representing 85% of the total funding of US$85 million projected budget covering the entire project until the end of June, 2019.