Bhubaneswar: A Capacity Building Workshop for Municipal Officials about rejuvenation and mapping of Urban Water bodies was organised by Housing and Urban Development department in collaboration with National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) at Xavier Institute of Management Auditorium, here Friday.
Officials from 21 ULBs including BMC & CMC from 9 districts will participates in the Workshop.
The Workshop was organised for Corporators/Councillors, Ward Officers, Municipal Engineers, City Mission Managers, Community Organizers and
TULIP Interns to make them aware about the values & technical functions of the urban wetlands & water bodies. It was aimed at building their capacity on mapping & assessment of urban wetland health, root cause for their degradation and develop of community led restoration strategies to restore,preserve, reclaim and rejuvenate the urban water bodies.
The inaugural session of the workshop was graced by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Mayor Sulochana Das, Special Secretary H&UD Sagarika Patnaik, State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) director Sarada Prasad Panda and Joint Secretary, H&UD Bhakta Kabi Das, C among others.
On the occasion, Panda said “We have set a target to rejuvenate and conserve more than 1700 waterbodies across 115 ULBs by 2024”
District Officials presented an overview of the ground situation and present water systems in place along with their efforts towards rejuvenation of waterbodies. Khurda Cluster training implored on the importance of the programme for the State and the programme implementation as a structured Citizen Led initiative. It elaborated on how the collective synergy between the elected representatives, women self-help groups, municipal engineers and student interns is the key to successful implementation.
Under the programme the pilot project of Drain 10 of BDA City Centre is under progress and further other waterbodies shall be shortlisted and funding sourced from multiple avenues such as 15th Finance Commission, AMRUT 2.0 (CWAP) and MUKTA scheme.
