Daily Times

In remote arid regions of Dadu and Jamshoro districts, the poor communities have joined hands to build small schemes of drinking water, drainage, sanitation, culverts, and brick pavement in village streets. The schemes completed in the shortest period of one year are benefitting more than 400,000 population in 556 villages.

Some 25000 poor villagers worked on the schemes and contributed labour share of PKR 26 Million. Thardeep Rural Development Program (TRDP) provided financial support of PKR 300 million to community led village organizations to build the schemes under the project funded by European Union.

Without involving contractors, the community village organizations with support of engineers from TRDP undertook the entire process of planning, designing and executing the schemes.

This participatory process involves identification of need for the specific scheme. The community women undertake assessment to decide about which scheme they want. The needs thus collected are then enlisted in village development plans which village organizations design with specifications of scheme and details of work plan and budget. The village organizations shared the plans with TRDP soliciting technical and financial support along with offering contribution from village community.

TRDP impart training to community volunteers on operation and maintenance of the scheme.

TRDP also impart training to community women volunteers on the importance of sanitation and self-hygiene. The volunteers then conduct sessions and raise awareness of communities on the sanitation, health and hygiene. Having water at the doorsteps saves time of village women to actively participate in such sessions and start small enterprises within their houses.

The community volunteers have also rehabilitated non-functioning schemes which were provided by Government. Mostly such schemes were run on diesel engines, and lack of system for paying bills of diesel render them non-functioning. The community volunteers switched the schemes to solar energy and made use of them.

Hundreds of poor households have set up small farms taking advantage of availability of water. They sell vegetables using the link roads built by village organizations, connecting their villages to the main roads and town markets.

During lockdown the vegetables grown at the small community farms were the main source of supply for towns.