National Short-term Consultant for Development of Circular on Rural Water Safety Plan on the Legal Aspect

1. Background:

On November 24, 2021, the Prime Minister has endorsed Decision No. 1978/QD-TTg approving the national strategy on rural water supply and sanitation to 2030, with a vision to 2045, in which one of the targets has been set to be by 2045, 100% of rural people will have access to safe water and sanitation. This sets out the task of continued maintenance and roll-on of rural water safety plan at the national scale.

The National Program for Water Safety has been approved by the Prime Minister for the period 2016-2025 in accordance with Decision No. 1566/QD-TTg dated August 9, 2016, in which the target has been set by 2025, the coverage of rural WSP implementation is 50%. According to that, one of the tasks to be performed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) is "Review and finalize mechanisms, policies, standards and technical regulations on water safe supply in rural areas, including supervising the implementation".

The Program results and achievements at local level in the last five years (2016-2020) showed that, many provinces have implemented good water safety plans (Hanoi, Ha Nam, Vinh Phuc, Hai Duong, Bac Ninh, Thua Thien Hue, Ba Ria Vung Tau, Binh Thuan, Can Tho, Tra Vinh, Ben Tre, An Giang and so on), in particular by the end of 2020, about 530/1,600 (5%) piped rural water supply systems have established and implemented water safety plans and it is expected that in the period of 2021-2025, other 2,090 (13%) rural water supply systems will continue to set up and implement water safety plans. However, up to now, many provinces have not yet implemented WSP since it is not mandatory or required by a law or an equal legal basis. If they implemented WSP, their implementation was not in line with WHO recommendations because they did not follow a national guideline on Water Safety Plan as they should be guided officially One of the main reasons for this situation is that there has been no legal document regulating the formulation and implementation of a rural WSP at both national and provincial levels. The National Program on Water Safety (2016-2025) set out the targets for coverage of rural Water Safety Plan; however, it did not stipulate rural Water Safety Plan as mandatory. As a result, water suppliers in rural areas do not consider applying rural Water Safety Plan as a necessary and compulsory task. Therefore, the development of a Circular guiding the water safety supply in rural areas in the transition period when Viet Nam has not yet developed a law on drinking water became very crucial.

Decision No. 5254/QD-BNN-PC dated December 31, 2021 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on the promulgation of development plan for legal document in which, the Water Resources Directorate (WRD) has been assigned to be in charge of drafting a Circular on guiding the implementation of WSP in rural areas and submitting it to the Ministry for promulgation in October 2022.

Based on the approved detailed plan on the circular development, the WRD is responsible for coordinating a team of national consultants to complete the development of the Circular to submit to MARD for promulgation in October 2022. As a result, WRD is proposing WHO Viet Nam to provide support in recruiting 02 national consultants, one on rural WSP aspect and another on legal/institutional aspect of WSP. This vacancy is for recruiting a national consultant to provide legal review and to support development of a draft Circular.

2. Planned timelines: Part time

Start date: 31 May 2022 (subject to confirmation) End date: 31 October 2022 Number of working days as a consultant: 30

3. Work to be performed

Purpose of the consultancy

To provide legal review and to support development of a draft Circular on Rural Water Safety Plan.

Method(s) to carry out the activity

Work as a team and under the close supervision and coordination of the WRD focal point and WHO Technical Officer in charge to develop a methodology for assessment of current situation of WSP implementation for conducting field trips.
Based on the agreed methodology, conducting field trips to review rural WSP implementation, find any legal and institutional gaps and obstacles and check if there are clear roles and function of relevant stakeholders in scaling up rural WSP at both national and provincial levels. In addition, the consultant should review if there is any financial mechanism for supporting implementation of rural WSP at national and provincial levels. The consultant should check if rural WSP needs to be mandated in a legal document like a Circular. He or she also needs to look at the whole process from proposal to approval for a WSP, putting into implementation, conducting auditing WSP to see if auditing is necessary to be included in the draft Circular with specific requirements such as set of indicators, frequency of auditing.
Writing a report summarizing and reporting detailed results of the implementation of rural WSP in the legal/institutional aspects, advantages and challenges in the implementation of WSP in the localities without legal documents to support.
Supporting development of an overall outline of the Circular and a draft Circular on rural WSP to make sure the Circular to comply with the standard format and requirements for a legal document by the government. The outline will be used to collect comments from all relevant stakeholders, editorial team, ministries, provinces, experts and water staff in the legal and institutional aspects
Facilitating 3 TWG/Editorial Team meetings and 1 workshop for data collection, comments and discussion points in terms of legal and institutional aspects.
Reviewing comments collected from TWG/Editorial Team meetings to revise the draft Circular
Consolidating comments from meetings and workshop and opinions from WRD regarding legal and institutional aspects into the final version of the Circular

Output/s

Output 1: An agreed methodology for the field assessment
Output 2: A report summarizing and reporting field trip results of the implementation of rural WSP in terms of legal and institutional aspects, advantages and challenges in the implementation of WSP in the localities without legal and institutional supports
Output 3: Supporting the legal context in drafting a Circular on rural WSP to collect comments from all relevant stakeholders, editorial team, Ministries, provinces, experts and workers
Output 4: Consolidated reports, collecting comments and providing feedbacks to ministries, organizations, experts, and editorial teams through meetings, workshop and written opinions
Output 5: Draft of circular on rural WSP in the legal and institutional aspects ready for consideration of MARD.

4. Specific requirements Qualifications required:

Post-graduate degree in Law or relevant areas from a recognized university.

Experience required:

At least 7 years of experience in developing laws, regulations, decree and circular and institutional arrangement, WASH, environmental health or relevant fields
Advantage: Experience in setting up Water Safety Plan program in Viet Nam, especially in providing advice on the legal document and institutional arrangement to MARD, WRD

Skills / Technical skills and knowledge:

Knowledge on legal and institutional arrangement in rural water supply sector, WSP approach and process, water quality issues in rural areas in Viet Nam;
Experience and skills in collecting data, reporting and development of guidelines, regulation and legal documents
Communication skills; and
Teamwork spirit and coordinating skills

Language requirements: