INFOM is a socio-economic development agency created in 1957 to provide technical and financial assistance for basic civil works programs to the 338 municipalities in Guatemala.
MSPAS is the national organization which oversees the planning, implementation, management, and evaluation of public health services in Guatemala.
Before our recent visit, I had read that Guatemala was the only country in Central America which does not have a unifying national water law. Although there have been many attempts spanning several decades to pass such a law (including 21 drafts before Congress in early 2013), fears of privatization and the desire of large industrial-agricultural corporations to avoid restrictions on water use and environmental regulation have prevented their adoption.
As spelled out in the 1985 Constitution, potable water in Guatemala is a public resource. Following the 1996 Peace Accords (which formally ended a decades long civil war) Guatemala passed legislation (Decreto 11-2002) to create a series of Development Councils which decentralized the management of public resources to ensure equitable distribution of public funds and to encourage greater participation of all populations (indigenous and non-indigenous) in the public administration process. Additional legislation (Código de Salud: Decreto 90-97, and Código Municipal: Decreto Ley 12-2002), explicitly tasks the municipalities (administratively similar to counties in the US) with the treatment of water for public consumption.
Unfortunately, while this may sound good in theory, we have learned that in practice many municipalities just don’t have the resources (or any real power of enforcement) to ensure safe water supplies. In fact, according to a recent report, 2/3 of the more than 23,000 public water supply systems monitored in 2011 were contaminated with microbial pathogens and only 1/3 contained residual levels of chlorine sufficient to ensure a safe supply.