Improving the Quality of Life in Armenia’s Urban Communities
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In December of 2008, Armenia Local Government Project Phase 3, through an additional infusion of funding from USAID for the co-financing of public service improvement equipment, delivered the last order of utility and garbage trucks to program communities. Of the 38 program communities, 27 seven communities identified solid waste collection as their highest problem and priority. Other communities identified equipment needs for school heating, road maintenance, street lighting and water system partial rehabilitation. The goal of the co-financing program was not simply to provide new equipment but to conduct training and development of a strategic plan to carry out sustained improvements in the quality of services and to involve citizens in the development of that strategy. During early 2009 two additional communities were added to the co-financing program, Tallin and Vardenis to bring the total number of communities participating in the co-financing program to 40.
These 40 urban communities represent 787,000 people, or approximately 40 percent of Armenia’s population outside of Yerevan and Gyumri.
The program’s success has been multifaceted—more frequent pick-up of garbage, coverage of parts of communities that were not previously covered, and an improvement that the city can deliver improved services resulting in customer/citizen satisfaction.
However, the programs impact does not stop at these important goals. In addition to the improved garbage collection service, cities such as Vayk, Kajaran, Sisian, Meghre, Agarak and Abovian started city-wide clean up campaigns to coincide with the increased frequency or better coverage of garbage collection. Also, many cities with the help of LGP 3 staff carried out public relations campaigns not only for the city-wide cleanup but also against illegal dumping, particularly construction materials.
Often these community-wide clean up campaigns have included NGOs to bolster the active participation of the whole community.
The co-financing of solid waste equipment proved to be effective because it:
- Offered a means to meet a very urgent need to improve local sanitation and beautify the community in approximately 40 percent of the country’s population.
- Provided the basis for communities to continue the improved service by training service providers to reach the financial break-even point (operational revenues cover operational costs through successful fee collection)
- Brought the public into the planning and decision making processes and helped determine how best to improve garbage collection service through the implementation of solid waste performance strategy development and action plan.
- Gave local city councils a greater role in setting and adopting service-level policy and in monitoring progress toward meeting the service-level goals set in the strategy.
- Enabled the city council, city staff, and citizens (customers) to view the equipment purchase process in terms of community improvement.
- Established better collection of service fees which means that the service has an opportunity to reach break-even.
- Established a means to assess customer service satisfaction leading to further service improvements.
Armenians, in the LGP 3 program cities, are more proactive and are experiencing an improvement of their quality of life through an improvement in health conditions (more frequent removal of garbage), reduction or elimination of offensive odor, and beautification in their communities.
