The city seminar of the ‘International Training Programme (ITP) on Sustainable Urban Water and Sanitation (SUWAS)’ held in Dhaka!
Jointly organised by WaterAid and NIRAS Sweden, the event was the culmination of a year-long engagement of six participants from batch 2017D, who presented their idea of change projects with an aim of contributing to the planning and implementation of a better and sustainable urban water and sanitation environment of the country.
Guests from the participants’ organisation, different government departments, civil society organisations, academia, private sector and national and international NGOs were present at the event, witnessing the project presentations and contributing to discussions surrounding the breakthrough project ideas the participants had to share. Topics presented included monitoring indicators for faecal sludge management and creating awareness, motivating, influencing and capacitating menstrual hygiene management, affordable water tariff plan for Dhaka’s low-income communities, a self-financing accessible model for lower income community people, integration of nutrition project with WASH to have more positive impact in health, developing a sustainable operational modality for public toilet, and installation of water ATM machines in selected low-income communities of Dhaka.
Present at the event as Chief Guest was Engineer Taqsem A Khan, Managing Director of Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWASA). Ms. Lisa Andersson, First Secretary, Development Cooperation Section, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Embassy of Sweden in Dhaka was present as the Guest of Honor.
The half-day event ended with participants receiving certificates and mementos of appreciation, leaving motivated to turn their change projects into action projects and helping the people most in need access their basic rights to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030.
Amongst other key guests present at the event were Mr Tushar Mohon Shadhu Khan, Additional Chief Engineer (Planning) of Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE), Md Liakath Ali, Director of Programmes and Policy Advocacy of WaterAid, Ms Martina Nee, Programme Manager of WaterAid Sweden, and Md Khairul Islam, Country Director of WaterAid.
