Integrity Pact Promotes Transparency around Pipe Replacement Contracts in El Salvador

On 17 November, the National Water and Sewerage Administration (Administración Nacional de Aqueductos y Alcantarillados, ANDA) in El Salvador received bids from companies for three projects to improve water and sewerage networks in greater San Salvador. The three projects with a total value of approximately 4 million US Dollars, financed by the Fund for Cooperation for Water and Sanitation (FCAS) of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID), will improve service delivery to some 31000 people in the municipalities of Santa Tecla, Mejicanos, Soyapango and San Salvador.

An Integrity Pact – a tool developed by Transparency International – is an agreement between the government agency offering a contract and the companies bidding for it that they will abstain from bribery, collusion and other corrupt practices for the extent of the contract.  To ensure accountability, Integrity Pacts also include a monitoring system typically led by civil society groups.

For the present Integrity Pact, the civil rights organization FESPAD (Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho) will act as the “social witness,” with the support from the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI. The Pact states that ANDA will disclose all information related to this tender and subsequent execution of the work to FESPAD, so that the process can be monitored by this civil society organization, which will make periodical reports publicly available. ANDA and the bidders are obliged to act in strict accordance with the law and ethical principles and values contained in the Ethics in Government Act and relevant ethical guidelines for the construction industry for the successful completion of the tender process and the execution of the work.

The Integrity Pacts for the works in greater San Salvador were signed by the president of ANDA, Marco Fortin; the executive director of the Foundation for the Study and Application of the Law (FESPAD), Abraham Abrego, as the social witness; the director of the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI, Marianne Kjellén, as international witness; and the bidders in each relevant area. The signatures were made in the presence of the Vice President of the Republic, Oscar Ortiz; the Secretary for Citizen Participation, Transparency and Anti-Corruption and AECID, Lourdes Palacios; and the  Coordinator for the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID) in El Salvador, Ignacio Nicolau, as honorary witnesses.

“We have a commitment to transparency and integrity in El Salvador, and I congratulate ANDA for their work on it, with the assistance of AECID, the Stockholm International Water Institute, and FESPAD” said the Vice President of the Republic of El Salvador, Oscar Ortiz.

The broader support by SIWI to ANDA forms part of the “Agreement on Technical Cooperation on Improving Integrity in the Management of ANDA.” This agreement aims to support ANDA in promoting and institutionalizing integrity into its organisational culture, by conducting a series of workshops and activities in order to improve the management of the institution through integrity aspects. The workshops have been conducted in collaboration of cewas, drawing on the methodology of the Integrity Management Toolbox, co-developed by cewas and Water Integrity Network with the support of GIZ.