From 16 to 20 September 2024, a delegation from PPWSA (Phom Penh Water Supply Authority) visited and learnt about the workings of the OiEau Training Centre (CFME), with a view to building a training centre in Phnom Penh.
This action follows an initial visit to the CFME by PPWSA in April, and a mission by OiEau to Phnom Penh at the end of May to carry out an opportunity study requested by AFD. The aim was to study and convince AFD and the European Union of the relevance of directing funds to help PPWSA.
The study was a success, as the EU has earmarked funds for this purpose.
4 questions to Mr Sereysomanuh Sauman, Director of Research and Development at PPWSA
Could you introduce us to PPSWA?
My colleagues and I all work for the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority, the public water distribution company in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Our responsibility is to produce and distribute drinking water to the citizens of the city of Phnom Penh and its suburbs, covering an area of around 700 square kilometres, with almost 500,000 connections at the end of this year, serving a population of between 2.5 and 3 million.
What are the main challenges you face?
The main challenge we face today is urbanisation, as Phnom Penh is a fast-growing city, leading to a very high and steadily increasing number of new demands for water.
With this challenge comes the need to reduce the amount of unbilled water in order to make our business profitable and sustainable. To achieve this, we need to strengthen the capabilities of our teams.
What are the aims of coming to OiEau?
We're here to find out how OiEau develops its training programmes. In particular, it's very interesting for us to find out how OiEau makes sure it presents the best industrial practices available.
Similarly, it is useful to learn about and examine the development of educational platforms, exploring the tools and technology used by OiEau to create effective learning platforms.
In short, we are here to learn OiEau's best practices, so that we can adopt them and implement them in our projects here at home. OiEau has been running very well and very sustainably since 1991, receiving around 5,800 trainees a year, if I remember correctly. We are here to benefit from the lessons learned from this long experience.
In your opinion, what are the strong points of the OiEau Training Centre?
Visiting the OiEau Training Centre was an eye-opener for me, enabling me to understand the process of building technical training centres equipped with tools, technologies, different platforms...
In the process of building a training centre, we have to go through a number of different stages: gathering information about needs, the professions we need to train to improve our capacity building, then constructing the building, selecting the areas, etc. By discovering your CFME, we understand the process and procedure.
We find it very interesting to have not only theoretical learning in the classroom, but also practical experience using all the equipment available on site.
And the way you organise your classrooms, with a maximum audience of 12 people, the use of digital technology available in the classrooms...
It's all very interesting.