UN-HABITAT to provide US$ 355,000

Kathmandu, September 21:

The Department of Urban Development and Building Construction (DUDBC) along with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) is starting an urban poverty mapping and gender assessment survey in eight municipalities and two towns, aiming to alleviate the urban poverty and to practice pro-poor urban governance.

The mapping will be held in Banepa, Dhulikhel, Panauti, Bidur, Bharatpur, Ratnanagar, Hetauda and Kamalamai municipalities and Itahari and Attaraiya towns.

According to the authorities concerned , such data are being collected for the first time in the country. The mapping will gather poverty and gender related-data from each household of the municipalities.

Dwarika Shrestha, deputy project manager of the Urban and Environment Improvement Project, said that because of a lack of proper urban poverty statistics, pro-poor programmes in urban areas have failed to generate the desired outcome .

“All we have done so far is to identify the clusters similar to squatters and we are facing difficulty to identify the poor population and pro-poor urban governance.”

The DUDBC is currently executing the Urban Environmental Improvement Project and different urban development and poverty alleviation programmes in eight municipalities. However, these programmes have failed to generate the desired result.

“Poverty ascertains urban development. Unless its status is identified, no programmes could be productive,” Shrestha added.

The project will help generate scientific methods to assess the need of poor urban population thus, the target groups could be identified and appropriate programmes could be formed, said Roshan Shrestha, chief technical advisor of the UN-HABITAT.

The technique for poverty mapping and gender assessment developed by the UN-HABITAT in 2005, tested in two peri-urban settlements in the Valley, would be used along with geographical information system for the mapping. The poverty would be mapped in four parameters: ultra poor, poor, non-poor and middle class.

The municipalities will conduct study based on the term of reference of the DUDBC.

The UN-HABIATAT is contributing US$ 355,000 and the DUDBC will contribute the remaining fund for the project starting from October 2007 to September 2008.