Performance assessment of Farmer Water User Community: a case study in Stung Chinit irrigation system, Cambodia

This paper aims at assessing performance of Farmer Water User Community (FWUC) using financial indicators and level of farmers' satisfaction to diagnose the problem and potential in improving the FWUC's performance. Both descriptive statistics and logistic regression models were used to analyze the collected data. An irrigation service fee (ISF) collection indicator shows a very good rate as nearly 97 % of farmers have paid in 2011, but a self-sufficient indicator reveals that the best percentage up to the same year is just 55 % that FWUC can pay for the expense, while the other share comes from government' subsidy. Descriptively, only 36 % of respondents are totally satisfied with the overall performance, while the rest is either satisfied or dissatisfied. The logit model used to assess the performance of FWUC through farmers' perceptions claims that all operative indicators including timeliness, adequacy, appropriate maintenance and proper ISF are statistically significant and affect their satisfaction. Among all, only equity indicator is not yet satisfied specifically for tailenders. Lesson learned from this case study allows a consideration on three aspects to improve the performance of the FWUC: farmer initiation, checking for consistency between the transferred scheme and local's capacity as well as the scheme's quality before the transfer.