Sheladia Associates, Inc.

The objective of the Emergency Irrigation Rehabilitation Project (EIRP) is to provide farmers in the project areas with improved irrigation (physically and O&M) to increase agricultural productivity and farm income, improve food security and livelihoods and reduce vulnerability due to droughts. This objective is to be achieved by:

• Rehabilitating and improving existing irrigation infrastructure
• Restoring and modernizing the hydro-meteorological network for better monitoring, planning, sustainable use and management of water resources, including contingency planning for droughts and floods
• Developing the institutional capacity of public sector water institutions, existing community water organizations and farmers for sustainable management and O&M of irrigation.

The EIRP approach actively involves community groups and water users’ associations (WUA) in both rehabilitation and operation and maintenance (O&M) of the irrigation systems in order to ensure their sustainability. Approximately 1,280 irrigation schemes covering 280,000 ha are proposed for rehabilitation during the three-year duration of the project which began in mid-2004 and is due to end March 2007 (with a credit closing date of 30 September 2007). This includes:

• Small Schemes—about 1,100 small irrigation schemes totaling approximately 110,000 ha, with priority given to canal and karez rehabilitation in the provinces of Kandahar and Wardak; canal rehabilitation in the provinces of Herat, Parwan and Badakhshan; and karez rehabilitation in Ghazni and Zabul. The focus will be on critical hydraulic structures that are bottlenecks for otherwise functioning systems.
• Medium Schemes—about 160 medium irrigation schemes covering 120,000 ha to be rehabilitated at the watershed level to maximize overall system efficiency, with priority provinces of Herat, Kandahar, Kunduz, Parwan, Ghazni, Baghlan and Helmand.
• Large Schemes—about 20 large irrigation schemes covering about 50,000 ha to be rehabilitated at the sub-basin level.

Brief Description of Services Provided
The main objectives of the M&E Consultancy are to establish the necessary institutional arrangements and develop capacity and knowledge of the M&E Unit of the MEW established first under EIRP. The following services are provided by SHELADIA specialists:

• Development of detailed monitoring framework for irrigation projects
• Surveys and subsequent information analysis
• Development of basic spatial knowledge based to inventorize and monitor irrigation assets
• Management information system development and implementation
• Development of web-based project management application
• Development of asset inventory GIS
• Evaluation of project performance
• Training and capacity building
• Preparation of progress reports.