Project News

SWMT project held the 1st regional workshops in each pilot site (Shobla Baloora19th May, Bisintaway: 20th May, Ebheet: 23rd May).

These workshops follow the 1st general workshop reported in the last project news. We invited all persons who have the very important role in each pilot site and undersecretaries of water resources and irrigation, Irrigation Advisory Service (IAS) engineers, Irrigation Sector(IS) engineers, Agriculture Extension(AE) engineers, Environment Sector(ES) engineers and members of Branch Canal Water Users' Association(BCWUA) .

In the first session, Japanese expert explained the outline of SWMT project, contents and schedule of project activities. And CDIAS(Central Department of Irrigation Advisory Service) engineer gave a presentation about the result of workshop in the 1st general workshop.

Presentation by Eng. Nagwa head of CDIAS (workshop at Shobla Baloola)

Presentation by Eng. Naito chief advisor of SWMT (workshop at Ebheet)

In the second session, attendees were divided into 3 groups and discussed 3 main topics of SWMT project; 1) Repairs of facilities, 2) Operation and Maintenance of facilities and 3) Water measurement, Environmental activities, Cropping pattern etc. In each topic, attendees made 1) List of detail activities, 2) Schedule of each activity and 3) Definition of each stakeholder's role for each activity.

In order to proceed the activities in pilot sites successfully, an adequate amount of budget should be allocated to facilities development and maintenance such as JRW(Joint Repair Work) At the same time, various stakeholders such as AE engineers, ES engineers, local unit and environmental NGO should be collaborated. Therefore, in these regional workshops we put emphasis on strengthening the ownership of all stakeholders for SWMT project.

Attendees in each group discussed with great heat, because the topics in these workshops were detailed and linked directly with the project activities. Especially the definition of each stakeholder's role was the very important point for discussion. Expert team was afraid that each stakeholder insisted their opinions and that discussion was stuck and never reached the conclusion. But actually, each stakeholder gave the positive opinions based on what they can do and the role-sharing for a lot of activities were decided in spite of the limited time.

Discussion in workshop (Bisintaway)

Presentation about results of workshop (Shobla Baloola)

In these regional workshops, all stakeholders attended the workshop and discussed the detailed contents, schedule and role of project activities positively. It was very fruitful. Based on the results of these workshops, we will start project activities in pilot sites with stakeholders’ continuous cooperation.