By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 19 May: Lack of access to safe and sufficient water, sanitation and hygiene facilities has a devastating effect on the health, dignity and prosperity of billions of people, and has significant consequences for the realisation of other human rights.
Since 1998, Rural Development Institute (RDI) of the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust (HIHT) has been working on its vision to enable water, sanitation and hygiene activities with the objective to deliver sustainable health and hygiene benefits through improvement in WATSAN services; especially in the remote rural hilly areas, thereby improving quality of life. It has covered more than 550 villages till date. Projects are designed with the need based, demand-responsive and community-driven approach. It ensures active participation of Panchayati Raj Institutions and its constituents; mainly engaging Gram Panchayats, user committees and the community; which plan/design/implement/manage their own schemes.
HIHT has been empanelled as Key Resource Centre (KRC) for National Jal Jeevan Mission (NJJM) by Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Union Ministry of Jal Shakti. KRC’s role is to provide training/capacity building to different stakeholders, disseminate knowledge and information, develop high-quality content, document best practices, etc. in the water supply sector. KRCs are expected to partner with NJJM to usher in the ‘change management’ in the sector.
Nitesh Kaushik, Nodal Officer of HIHT participated in the National Workshop on Capacity Building under Jal Jeevan Mission to provide Har Ghar Jal, a flagship programme of Government of India. This workshop was organised by the Ministry of Jal Shakti and UNICEF in Delhi to sensitise and prepare an action plan for capacity building of various stakeholders of JJM.
Kaushik shared that KRC-HIHT has trained 606 Public Health Engineers across 24 States/UTs through 12 online trainings and 4 offline trainings; and 221 functionaries/ representatives of PRIs & VWSCs of Uttarakhand through 4 offline trainings till now. Topics covered included participatory planning and implementation, innovative water supply technologies, rain water harvesting, long term source sustainability, grey water management, etc. He also briefed about issues and challenges in capacity building.
He disclosed that HIHT has been nominated as Sector Partner of National Jal Jeevan Mission by the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti till 2024. Thematic areas of collaboration are Programme Management, Knowledge Management, Capacity Building and Community Engagement, etc., to realise the goals of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) – Har Ghar Jal. HIHT has been also empanelled as Implementation Support Agency (ISA) by the Government of Uttarakhand.
