LYSA is an operator that is committed to sustainable management of drinking water and sanitation, a pragmatic specialist that combines its experience and skills with those of the local players in developing countries, to raise their public services and their networks to international standards of efficiency and achieve economic sustainability. Its special governance involves working hand in hand with regional authorities that have the poorest populations in the world.
LYSA is an international operator, specialised in water and sanitation that operates in medium-sized towns (100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants) in developing countries throughout the world, who are upgrading the level of their services. LYSA's aim is to contribute, at its level, to achieving the objectives of the Millennium campaign in the fight against poverty and inequality.
Either as a pragmatic assistant or as an efficient manager of public services which are in the process of renovation, LYSA is focused on obtaining results agreed by the contracting authorities and their local partners. Its remuneration depends directly on the results achieved.
It is in this way that LYSA's subsidiary, ACUAVIVA in Palmira, 360,000 inhabitants in Colombia, achieved the best management indicators in the country: service cover and debt recovery of almost 100%, non-revenue water of less than 25% and continuous profitability over the years.
LYSA acts as a delegated manager of public drinking water and sanitation services, and also, alone or in a consortium, on study missions, prior to, or in parallel with the operation, and as a provider of technical assistance services for operators.
With its institutional partners, LYSA participates in the construction of local knowledge resulting from the merging of experience, techniques and research aimed at ensuring greater efficiency. Acting transparently, and maintaining information symmetry, LYSA organises "a school of management" with its partners so as to pass over the controls of an efficient sustainable activity at the end of its mission.
Transparent, shared management encourages creativity: methods of management, objectives of service coverage, pricing, transfer, taxation and remuneration, are built up as part of a participative process, with realism, and without losing sight of the main goal: achieving the result. The Société des Eaux de St-Marc (SESAM), a Haitian company, a subsidiary of LYSA, which, in a particularly difficult context quickly improved the quality of service in the country, summarises LYSA's principle of governance, shared by its employees, as follows: "The management is committed to preventing corruption in all its forms. Our employees are also committed to preventing corruption in all their professional actions and their relations with Customers."
LYSA makes available its extensive experience in water and urban sanitation, its skills and energy as a player in the field of development, in order to break with fatalistic attitudes and bring about change towards a sustainable improvement in service, and also to overcome obstacles and remove uncertainty, and finally to meet the challenge of international standards of quality of service, of pricing and of profitability.