Publications

ASIST Bulletin no. 11, July 2000

ASIST - How it began, what it is now and where it is going

By Jan de Veen, Vlissingen, The Netherlands

The pre-ASIST environment

In the mid 1980s several factors contributed to a very different perception of the role of public works in developing countries and the manner in which they should ideally be implemented. First, there was the growing realisation that many public assets, such as infrastructure for transport, water supply, health and education, were being lost because of a lack of maintenance. Many initiatives were taken to deal with this maintenance crisis. A well-known example was the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Programme (SSATP) with its different components dealing with road maintenance, urban and rural transport, and rail and waterways.

Second, the slow but steady economic deterioration in many countries resulted in a reduced effectiveness of Government technical ministries, plagued by severe budget reductions, poorly functioning equipment holdings, shortages of foreign exchange and personnel problems of insufficient, underpaid and ill-motivated staff. Innovative responses were needed to halt the vicious circle of less resources leading to reduced effectiveness leading to poor infrastructure, which in its turn negatively affected economic performance.

At this time also there was a significant push for greater private sector involvement and increased commitment and accountability of the `stakeholders' (including users, funders and implementers) of public works. This implied that different concepts of planning for and carrying out public works were required and that new opportunities came about to involve local communities and small contractors in this field.

The technical and economic case for labour-based approaches had long since been made. Large scale force account programmes in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa had shown that labour-based methods were competitive in terms of quality, cost and

speed, provided that modern management techniques were applied and appropriate good quality, well-designed hand tools and light equipment were used. All major players acknowledged that the use of labour-based approaches should be seriously considered by all countries with a surplus of labour at wage levels of US$ 4 per day or less, (although these figures are under re-examination). As this applied (and continues to apply) to most developing countries it was evident that the potential for a much larger utilisation of local resources for public works was huge.

The response

In this context it was therefore important to provide those countries and projects with experience or an interest in using labour-based methods for public works with the means to grow, while at the same time looking for the ways and means to engage small local firms and communities. Possibilities existed in both rural and urban environments in the design and execution of road, water and soil conservation works, as well as in the building and maintenance of community buildings such as schools and health facilities.

Both the donor community and the ILO acknowledged that a concerted effort was needed to (i) stimulate the large scale use of local resources for these different types of infrastructure and, (ii) respond to the manpower, skills and funding requirements of public works planned with and implemented by the local stakeholders. At the time the ILO provided advisory services in this field directly from Geneva and through a handful of `Regional Advisers' based in Bangkok, Nairobi and Abidjan. These services related primarily to the design of labour-based pilot/demonstration projects, but did not address the need for international interaction and training. There were gaps in the provision of high-level management training for large numbers of managers, the availability of technical information and in the exchange of project experiences. Although training and general information was given, projects mostly operated in isolation in their national contexts and managers often felt the need for specialised information as well as for more interaction with relevant labour-based programmes in other countries.

The ASIST initiative

Africa

In June 1990, building upon the experience obtained with (i) the development and running of pilot international training courses for engineers and senior technicians at the Kisii Training Centre in Kenya (sponsored by the Swiss Development Co-operation) and (ii) an East and Southern Africa sub-regional project of advisory services for labour-based works (funded by NORAD), two inter-related workshops were held in Nyeri, Kenya. The objective of these workshops was to define the need and funding requirements for international initiatives dealing with training and information services (workshop 1) and advisory support (workshop 2) for labour-based works. Senior representatives from partner Governments, donors and the ILO attended the workshops. They produced project outlays for two regional service projects of three years duration. Those were subsequently integrated to become the ILO African programme of `Advisory Support, Information Services and Training (ASIST)' for labour-based infrastructure works.

ASIST initially covered 12 countries in East and Southern Africa, but provided support to international training and information delivery on a global scale. Since 1991 ASIST was evaluated several times by independent teams and reviewed by its stakeholders on a regular basis. ASIST's continued relevance was consistently revalidated. The most recent of these exercises, which took place in Harare, Zimbabwe in November 1999, also reviewed the more recent ASIST components dealing with `Access and Rural Employment' and `Urban Infrastructure' respectively,

Asia

The Asian financial crisis and ensuing unemployment—particularly of low skilled workers—resulted in a number of Asian Governments initiating large-scale employment-intensive public works programmes. Unfortunately, those that were set up tended to neglect the quality and productivity aspects in favour of the requirements for quick and large-scale employment. Consequently the risk was significant that these programmes would reconfirm the old prejudices about labour-based techniques being backward, wasteful and slow. In order to reduce this risk, the ILO took a number of initiatives, particularly in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, to ensure that the long term aspects of labour-based works were taken into account. The recently (May 1998) established `ASIST - Asia and the Pacific' (ASIST-AP) programme, set up within the organisational structure of ILO's Regional Office in Bangkok, was the vehicle through which advisory support and project development services were delivered to these countries and others throughout the Asian region. ASIST-AP established strong links with ASIST Africa, particularly in relation to the provision of information in the labour-based field. Information exchange between the two programmes and ILO Geneva on the most recent developments in terms of access and rural employment, and urban infrastructure has also been important.

Where to from here?

The demand for the type of services provided by ASIST, complementing the ILO advisory work carried out by its regular Multi Disciplinary Teams, is growing fast. ASIST programmes continue to be an indispensable means for the ILO to apply its policies on the ground and to make a real impact at project level. The existing ASIST programmes in Africa and Asia will continue: the former at its current level, the latter with an expanding team. Efforts will also be made to launch ASIST-type programmes in Latin America and West Africa. For the foreseeable future the focus of ASIST work will be to (i) apply the principles of labour policies and practices and private sector development, set out in the ILO's two recently published Guides and, (ii) continue its research, policy development and project implementation with local communities to deal with access and infrastructure in both rural and urban environments.