Workshop cum training on Safe Management of Water and Sanitation in rural areas

July 11 - 12, 2022

Rural Water and Waste team rolled out a workshop cum training on Safe Management of Water and Sanitation in rural areas from July 11-12, 2022. The teamtravelled to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania to conduct a workshop cum training with the partners from Ministry of Health, Tanzania, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda and Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria. This is first of its kind post COVID hiatus, as the team has been working with the three countries online in continuation with the Memorandum of Understanding which the team has with Ministry of Health, Tanzania, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda and Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria to capacitate them on the issues of safe sanitation and sustainability of water sources. As the COVID restrictions have now started to ease out, the team as a first step conducted workshop at Four Points by Sheraton, Dar Es Salaam to meet the partners in person and also decide how can the teams further work together to build up on CSE’s vision of South-South cooperation. The two day workshop started with Ms. SushmitaSengupta focusing on the need for safe management of water resources, faecal sludge and grey water. This was followed by the three countries briefing on the status and initiatives on Safe Management of Water and Sanitation issues in Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania. Second Day started with a speech by the Deputy Permanent Secretary-Mr.SeifShekalaghe and a warm welcome by Ms. SunitaNarain-Director General, CSE.

Ms. Swati Bhatia and Ms. Ravi Kumar talked in detail about some good learnings from India on Safe Management of Fecal sludge and Grey water respectively. This was followed by Ms. SunitaNarain talking about the impact of climate change and its relation to water and Sanitation. The forum was then made open to facilitate discussions among the countries. Deputy Permanent Secretary-Mr.SeifShekalaghe and Ms. SunitaNarain-Director General, CSE took up all the queries from the participants. Both the guests agreed to importance of imparting knowledge to all the stakeholders. The session ended with a vote of thanks to Mr.SeifShekalaghe by the Director General, CSE. Twenty Participants from ministries of the three countries namely Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria participated in the workshop. They were excited to understand on can they learn more from CSE’s expertise and implement better.

The workshop ended with half day brain storming session on July 13, 2022. During the session all the three countries presented their ideas on what can be the agenda way ahead to work with the three countries. This shall now be followed by an exposure visit of the officials from Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania to India in September’22.

CSE in the last two years has worked with three ministries on a series of scoping paper on the state of water and sanitation for all these countries and has chalked out the issues and the probable solutions. Learnings from India has been shared with the officials through webinars and capacity building programmes in the last two years. More than 400 officials have been trained on the issues of water management, groundwater recharge and safe sanitation practices to enable the partner countries to meet SDG 6. These were all done online during COVID times.