Dharan Water Forum – 6 was convened on 12th October 2018 in the chairmanship of Ms. Manju Bhandari, Acting Mayor of Dharan Sub Metropolitan City. More than 30 participants including ward female members, representative from squatter settlement leaders, dalit community leaders, engineers, Dharan water supply board members participated in the event. The theme of sixth series was on ‘’Gender and Social Inclusion for Climate adaptive water management’’. Dharan Water Forum is organized by Dharan Sub Metropolitan city and Dharan Water Supply Management Board with the facilitation support of Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) since 22nd December 2016.
The program started with opening remarks of Er. Raju Pokharel, Dharan Water Supply Management Board, regarding sharing the concept of Pani Chauatri. He also gave an overview of the last 5 series of PaniChautari. After that, Dr. Nani Raut, Gender Expert, presented findings of research in Dharan. She mentioned that in almost all houses women has major responsibilities in collecting water for household purposes and hence are facing extra burden of work. Similarly, she shared that the water in Dharan is contaminated with fecal coliform. Similarly, Ms. HemaThalang, Gender Focal Person, of Dharan Sub Metropolitan presented current polices and plans of Sub Metropolitan regarding Gender and Social Inclusion. Ms. Thalang stated, the plan of municipality to make Dharan a gender friendly city and that can be an opportunity to add the component of climate adaptive water management to make it more gender and socially inclusive city.
The session was moderated by Dr Chandra Pandey, Research Director at SIAS. During the discussion most of the female participants shared their painful experience of collecting a bucket of water to fulfill the daily need of family. All participants agreed that gender and social inclusion should not be taken as separate element rather it needs to be included in all sectors.
Finally, Ms. Manju Bhandari, Acting Mayor of Dharan stated there is necessity of clear indicators to determine if the programs are gender friendly or not in every sectors such as water management. She asked SIAS to support her local government to develop robust indicators to measure the status of municipality in being gender friendly and socially inclusive. Finally, she thanked SIAS for facilitating to organize Pani Chautari at regular interval of time and in bringing the issues which are much needed to be discussed.
