Rural Water Programme Active in St. Elizabeth

The Rural Water Programme is currently hosting training activities in St. Elizabeth, as part of the overall capacity building of its Project Implementation Unit.
Community Development and Outreach Consultant of the Rural Water Programme in the Ministry of Housing, Transport, Water and Works, Audrey Rose, informed JIS News that, “we are currently conducting training in St. Elizabeth with the Five Star Development Benevolent Society”.
“This is geared at building the membership of the society in a way that they will be able to efficiently operate the community-managed water system that we are implementing,” she explained.
“The training consists mainly of skills development and administrative procedures. We have conducted one training already [in October, with 25 participants] in Meeting Management and Procedures and we are currently running, in partnership with HEART in Black River, a computer skills training programme,” she added.
Miss Rose pointed out that the computer training course involved 40 persons from the community and the Benevolent Society. “This is being done because we want to give them a livelihood skill, as well as skills that will be essential in the operations of the Benevolent Society as a water organization,” she noted.
The consultant said that another training course on ‘Team Building, Communication and Planning’, is scheduled for December.
In addition, there are other capacity building activities that will be undertaken in the community. “We are facilitating project development, and in so doing we have the community members, particularly those of the benevolent societies, to manage the project .so that they will be able to manage future projects when our rural water project has been completed,” Miss Rose said. The communities in St. Elizabeth that will benefit from the Rural Water Programme are Fyffes Pen, Content, Cutterwood, Selington and Shrewsbury.
The water systems to be implemented islandwide under the programme are being funded by the Government and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) at a cost of US$8 million.