Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 6:

Mayors and the chiefs of sanitation section of all the 58 municipal corporations, including political leaders, engineers and key government officials, are meeting for a three-day seminar and consultation workshop on decentralised water and waste water management.

The local representatives and technicians will discuss various aspects of the global shortage of drinking water and remedial ways from March 14 to 16 in Kathmandu.

The meet will discuss urban growth and the Millennium Development Goals, which targets to reduce the current population lacking access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation by half by 2015.

Nepal is also one among the countries signed to achieve this goal, though at present less

than 50 per cent of the total demand of drinking water is met in the capital city.

Activists working in the field of water and sanitation have emphasised local participation in achieve this goal.

"We have to respond locally to this global problem. This meet will show that even middle-class people can easily get rid of water shortage by following simple technologies of reusing water," said Prakash Amatya, general secretary of the Non-governmental Organisation Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation.

The participants will also discuss on urban poor and access to water, Kathmandu valley urban water supply reforms, personal hygiene and public health, water quality testing techniques and water quality improvement techniques.

Information of rain water harvesting and tanker water suppliers will also be shared during the meet.

"The participants will be taken around some areas where the local efforts in reusing water has become successful and will appeal the mayors to do something similar in other cities as well," Amatya said. Most of the cities in Nepal do not have proper supply of drinking water.