ABSTRACT
As is well documented in the literature, many developing countries have neglected project operation and maintenance (O&M), which has resulted in a rapid depreciation of past irrigation investments (Carruthers, 1981) 1 . Irrigation systems fail to irrigate their planned or projected command areas and after a few years parts of the systems no longer function (Wade, 1975). The problem is that there are too few farmer or government agency incentives that foster investments in O & M and assure that irrigation projects operate at high levels of performance over long periods of time. For example, there is a lack of accountability for O & M because of the weak linkage between those providing O&M and those benefitting from it.
