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ASIST Asia-Pacific

The ASIST-AP programme is the operational arm of the Employment Intensive Investment Programme of the International Labour Organization for the Asia-Pacific Region, based in Bangkok, Thailand. The core team consists of five technical professionals and two administrative staff. In addition, the team is supplemented by a number of short and long term international and national professional staff and consultants engaged in country level activities.

Its objective is to assist governments and donors to effectively incorporate the concept of long-term employment creation and economic growth into public sector infrastructure investment policies. The underlying thought is that this provides a mechanism to support poverty reduction efforts.

At the policy level, the programme provides Advisory Support, Information Services, and Training to Governments of the region on the orientation of public investment in infrastructure to maximize employment.

At the working level, it is being implemented through four fields of operation: local level planning, labour-based technology, small-scale contracting and infrastructure maintenance strategies. These four fields, that are mutually reinforcing, represent the key issues for a comprehensive, effective and sustainable provision of infrastructure, from planning through to maintenance.

The combined use of local participation in planning with the utilization of locally available skills, technology, materials, and appropriate work methods has proven to be an effective and economically viable approach to infrastructure works in developing countries.

The programme has been intentionally designed to be process oriented rather than product oriented. To achieve significant and lasting results will take considerable time and the results will be different in each country. The emphasis of the programme will be on creating an enabling and transparent framework for local resource based approaches. This will happen through a range of interventions that demonstrate the viability of the approach, working towards the governments taking ownership of the approach. Thus the strategy of the programme is to work with governments towards the development of the appropriate framework.

ASIST-AP works with both national and local governments, with regional and national bodies such as universities and the multi-lateral agencies such as the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). ASIST-AP also works with various bilateral donors like the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

Currently, ASIST-AP is working in Cambodia, Lao P.D.R, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor Leste, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal providing the following services to central and local governments:

Planning and policy development and design of rural infrastructure programmes;
Technical and managerial support to project implementation;
Preparation of planning and implementation guidelines;
Appropriate methods of promoting the involvement of the domestic construction industry in rural infrastructure works;
Design and conduct of tailor-made training programmes;
Design of appropriate maintenance management systems.

The ASIST-AP programme has been institutionalised as an operational arm of the Employment Intensive Investment Programme of the ILO. The strength of ASIST-AP is that it provides advice, information and training within a framework of partnership with governments, the private sector, universities and funding agencies. ASIST-AP has no major investment resources of its own, but because of its objectivity and its position as part of the ILO it can be a catalyst in sourcing funds in infrastructure.
The role of ASIST-AP is to assist governments to effectively incorporate the aforementioned principles into their investment programmes and to provide support to ensure sustainability and quality control.

This requires that ASIST-AP:

Provides technical input into the development and implementation of infrastructure programmes.
Maintains an information base that provides a centre of knowledge for the Asian region on local resource based infrastructure.
Supports the development of a network of institutions and individuals involved with the four fields of operation.

ASIST Asia-Pacific

Further reading