India: WASMO bags Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration

The Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO), based in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, has been selected for the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for 2006-07 for its initiative, ‘Innovative Participatory Drinking Water Delivery Approach in Rural Areas of Gujarat – WASMO’s Experiment for Efficient Local Self Governance’, The Prime Minister presented the award to Dr. Jaipal Singh, CEO, WASMO on the 3rd Civil Service Day organised in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on 21 April, 2008. The Civil Service Day is organised every year by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, government of India.

The awards are presented for the three categories of i.) individual, ii.) team and iii.) organisation. WASMO received the award under the organisation category. The award consists of a citation, a medal and a cheque of Rs. 5,00,000/ -. An exhibition depicting innovations in administrations was put up where all selected innovations were showcased by way of a photo gallery.

Source: WASMO, Apr 2008

Guinea worm eradication: President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire receives Jimmy Carter Prize

The Jimmy Carter Prize, sponsored by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, was awarded to President Laurent Gbagbo of the Cote d’Ivoire for his push to eradicate the waterborne disease Guinea worm in his country. Ivoirien Minister of Health and Public Hygiene Allah Kouadio Remi was another nominee. Fighting Guinea worm, or dracontiasis, is an uphill battle in regions where there isn’t enough safe drinking water, whether from poor waste disposal, rapid population growth, or both, as in Abidjan District. Komlan Siamevi of the World Health Organization, who presented the prize in Cocody, praised President Gbagbo’s efforts.

Source: Ernest Aka Simon, Fraternité Matin (Abidjan) / allAfrica.com [in French], 16 May 2008

Edgar Quiroga is the new Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Universidad del Valle, Colombia

Professor Edgar Leonardo Quiroga Rubiano is the new Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. He has been elected for the period 2008-2011, and will assume his new post on June 1st. Prof. Quiroga, a sanitary engineer, was director of CINARA, the Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo en Abastecimiento de Agua, Saneamiento Ambiental y Conservación del Recurso Hídrico, from 2001 to 2007. CINARA is a research and development institution based at the Faculty of Engineering at Universidad del Valle.

Read more (in Spanish): CINARA

WESNet Pakistan update

The WESNet Pakistan website domain (www.wesnet.pk) [not yet operational, the old WESNet site was hosted by IRC –
http://www.wesnetpak.watsan.net
/) has been acquired by IUCN on May 14th, 2008. IUCN has agreed to pay the cost of this domain for the next two years. All seven partner institutions of WESNet Pakistan (i.e. UNICEF, UNDP, IUCN, WSP, Google Group, Lead Pakistan & RSPN) will contribute in developing and strengthening WESNet Pakistan website.

In addition, WESNet Pakistan secretariat has been established and housed at Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN) office to facilitate coordination at the national level. In this regard, two secretariat staff have been placed: Waqas Zafar and Saviba Naeem.

Read more: drinking water-Pakistan, 15 May 2008

World Water Council names new Director General

Mr. Ger Bergkamp [left] has been appointed as Director General of the World Water Council, effective June 1st, 2008. Mr. Daniel Zimmer [right], who has served as Executive Director of the Council since November of 2001, will continue as Associate Director in charge of the Preparation of the 5th World Water Forum until June, 2009.

Read more: WWC, 13 May 2008

Verviers film festival links with 5th World Water Forum

The film festival “Verviers au film de l’eau” (Belgium) supported by UNESCO-IHP, ended on 16 March 2008. It led to the projection of 23 documentaries on the theme of water, which an international jury chose to award the first prize ex aequo to The Dyke by Frédéric Touchard, a documentary shot in the Nord-Pas de Calais region in France which delivers a contemplative and poetic approach to water-related issues, and to the movie Dead in the Water [view clip here] by Neil Docherty, which describes in detail the water related issues in the world. The poetic and artistic vein of Village of Dust, City of Water [view promo here] by the director Sanjay Barnela, from Moving Images, was awarded a special mention by the jury. These films will be part of the selection of the International meeting “Water and Cinema” to be held in March 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey during the 5^th World Water Forum, through a partnership established between the two events.

Source: UNESCO Water Portal Bi-monthly Newsletter, No. 203, 17 Apr 2008

Sunita Narain ranked 59th in Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Sunita Narain, Director of India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and winner of the 2005

Sunita Narain

Stockholm Water Prize, has been ranked 59th in Foreign Policy’s magazine list of top 100 Public Intellectuals. During nearly four weeks of voting in May-June 2008, more than 500,000 people cast their votes.

See the full rankings here

To view the complete list of intellectuals, please click here

Sulabh International plans to open branches in 50 countries

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, India, revealed in an interview published in April 2008 in the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) “Water Champion” series, that his organisation plans to open branches in 50 countries. Sulabh has already constructed and is maintaining public toilets in Afghanistan and Bhutan and has provided training to professionals in 15 African countries, Dr. Pathak said. Other plans include publishing Sulabh literature in all the 22 languages of India, and distributing 5 books each to 600,000 villages.

WaterAid advocacy project gets DFID funding

A project proposal submitted by WaterAid is one of 36 (out of 272 applications) that will receive funding from DFID’s Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF). The GBP 130 million (EUR 166 million = US$ 256 million) fund was launched in February 2007.

The title of WaterAid’s project is “Developing Southern Civil Society advocacy in Water and Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central America”.

Read more: DFID, 6 May 2008