PEMBERDAYAAN MASYARAKAT DALAM PENGELOLAAN JARINGAN IRIGASI MENDUT KABUPATEN SEMARANG

Abstract

Government of Semarang Regency have been giving the authority of irrigation system management of Mendut Irrigation Area to community. This policy based on law and government rule about the irrigation that ordered the irrigation management transfer program to the commnity. The hope of this program is the community autnomous in irrigation management can support the sustainable development. The irrigation management transfers efforts implemented in community empowerment of Mendut to manage irrigation system through Water User Association (WUA). Some problems has appeared in community empowerment effort such as the level of community education and knowledge is low, the diffidulty of Irrigation Service Fee (ISF) collection, the implementation of organization (WUA) management hasn’t worked, and the socialization effort hasn’t programmed. Those problems were made the implementation of community empowerment in Mendut irrigation system management need to be asked. To identify the implementation needs a community empowerment and its improvement effort analysis in order to find out that condition. The analysis consist of characteristic and potential of community, knowledge and capability of community, community empowerment and improvement effort. The research is a inductive qualitative research that used ratinalistic qualitative descriptive method. The research pbject are farmers, WUA board, and local government which represented by irrigation agency of Semarang municipality and Tengaran branch. As the results ofvthose analysis we figure out that the condition of community empowerment in irrigation system management is not working well because there are many empowerment elements has not complete such as irrigation service fee is not paid, the level of community knowledge and capability in irrigation management is low. Some effort for the improvement are needed such as powering, enabling, protecting, supporting, maintaining, guiding, and training from the local government.