Tuesday, July 26, 2011

My Fourth Day at Neetishala



As the days of workshop are running off it is being quite interesting, exciting , enthusiastic and so on then the previous days of the workshop. We are getting opportunity to sharpen our knowledge day by day not only by national resource person but by international personal too.
Today on 26th of July 2011 , our debriefing session goes very nicely as well with the comment of the organizer for the promotion of the campaign. Prof. Andrew Pettit Morriss took the session of Externalities, Coase and the problem of Social Cost  and the Environment perservation: Government or Markets? with very interesting story of woodpecker and the Hawk as well as with interesting games by which we became more clear to our session beside that the Group work was so interesting and I was on "Water" group. Today we won the gift for the best presentation on Prof. Moriss session about the policy.
The another session was of Mr.Ratish Basnyat from FNCCI on "Globalization and Trade Liberalization Policy in Context of Nepal". Similarly today we got time for the given workouts as well as we have a memorable photo session .
In my point of view, now the participants are getting more comfortable with each other in sessions and feeling proud to be a part of Neetishala Workshop.

“Khullamanch at the Glance”


Employment is back on the international development agenda. The question of more and better jobs for the poor in developing countries was intensively debated. Informal sector is most often the only asset of the Kathmandu’s   poor and a growth process that does not create more and better jobs might fail to reduce poverty for a large share of people, so that in developing countries, some of the potential working population earns their living in the informal sector.
There are many types of work in the informal sector; among them one is street vending. Majority of the vendors' income is not able to handle overall family expenditure. They would define this economy or sector in other words: not in what it is not, but what it is: the only way to earn a living for people who are self-employed outside the formal economy and not on anyone's payroll. Most of them don't live and work in this sector because it is their wish or choice, but because they have no chance to be hired by an employer from the formal sector. Streets are more vulnerable place in terms of traffic and environment. It lacks basic service like protection from rain, sun, dust, services like water, toilet. It is prone to noise, air and land pollution.
Although there are a lot of street vendors all over Nepal, we can take street vendors of Khullamanch as an example. From one report of Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) in collaboration of Action Aid Nepal (AAIN) 2010 it shows that there are more than 700 stalls around Khullamanch and they are not new for the city because they have evicted from the different cities before three years. As the eviction is the major problem of street vendors now they knew one can do nothing to get their rights. So, now they know the importance of being organized. Through the report of CIUD shows that 50% of the vendors are involved in some right based organization of vendors. Mostly it is reported that the vendors of Khullamanch are involved in Sorojgar Bapyar Samaj, Shramik Sangathan, GFONT, Trade Union, Mahila Samaj and Maoist Union.
The informal sector plays an important and controversial role in our society. Among this informal job in present context, in Kathmandu the street vending job is more popular in migrant people. It provides jobs and reduces unemployment and underemployment, but in many cases the jobs are low-paid and the job security is poor. At the present context of Kathmandu there is large magnitude of workforce getting their livelihood from the informal sector.  But because of unmanaged street problem the beauty of the city is declining day by day while street vendors are using the places without taxes and rent, which itself counts as controversial.  Broadly, the informal sector provides income-earning opportunities for a larger number of workers as well it can be said that it is contributing towards the nation and society as well.
On the top of that the contribution of street vendors in urban economy is positive so that in this situation, comparing to other places of Kathmandu, Khullamanch appears a more favorable place that probably related to its characteristics and the role of NGO related to street vendors to provide advocacy to the vendors and the Government has to play a role of facilitator and promoter so that the workers employed in the informal sector are able to get requisite level of protection and security to have decent work environment enabling them to utilize their skills fully and according to their capabilities necessary for enhancing the competitiveness of their outputs and thereby raising their income and socio-economic status.
On third day of Neetishala (25th of July 26, 2011) all the participants were looking fresh with new enthusiasm to involve in the workshop.
After the debriefing session , Prof. Andrew Pettit Morriss from University of Alabama USA took the sessions on Policies for economic development, Public Choice: The Economics of Government  and Monetary Policy: Central Bank Vs Private Bank. Beside that Mr. Prem Khanal, Associate Editior of Republica National Daily took the session on Mass Media  and policy Advocacy.
As all the sessions were very important, all participants took very lively and active participation in all the sessions. Regarding the session some participants were even in discussion session at the lunch time too . I think this shows the youth want to do really something for the economic growth.
Similarly , the group of mine (The Vision Group ) is promoting its campaign on the topic “Oil Nigam Kahile Samma Petrol Sankaat”. To promote this campaign our “The Vision Group” organized signature campaign as well as on the statue campaign to promote the campaign.
At the end of the day the sessions ends with the presentation programme  of the article on “Swedish Myth”, on this programme  group 102 won the prize for their wonderful presentation.


Sunday, July 24, 2011

Neetishala Workshop

We started the Neetishala workshop on  23rd of JULY 2011 Saturday. These two days have been  very informative and challenging.

We have had great speakers like Dr. Bhola Chalise, Mr. Sagar Parsai, Prof. Mahesh Baskota and others.

We have participated in many activities like discussion and blogging.

Also looking forward to a great fun day tomorrow too!

"The Urban Predicament at Manohara River Bank"



Centre For Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) has organized talk programme in the topic of "The Urban Predicament at Manohara River Bank"  at Urban Dabali conducted by Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC) with the joint effort of Samudayik Sarathi.  Jonathan Hursh , Executive director and founder of CMC introduced the motto of CMC and vision of community shipping centre. According to him community center is envisioned as the platform as the need of community in holistic way which will try to build community relationship for the social change.
 Tara Bhandari, Chairman of Samudayik Sarathi presented his presentation on the findings of base line survey of Manohara Slum settlements. The survey was done on 416 households of the area. There were  69% indigenous, 23% others, 6% dalits and 2% minority group people settling down. People from 49 districts were migrated in this slum area majority from Khotang district. The majority people quoted the cause of their migration from their native places are unemployment. It has been found that majority of people are engaged in labour.
Participants from different organizations directly or indirectly working in the sect of urban areas, informal sector, woman rights and child rights, participant from the Manohara Slum area took part actively in floor discussion session.  Dilu Basyal, participant from slum, said that water and sanitation are  emerging problem of the area . She blamed the government that it is not being sensitive enough about the slum areas.   Prakash Chandra Amatya , Executive Director of CIUD, commented that slum and squatter areas are emerging threat of the world and Government as well as Non-Government Organizations should work hand in hand to solve the problems

Workshop on "Open Space in Kathmandu Valley"

A workshop on the topic "Open Space in Kathmandu valley" was conducted by CIUD in joint efforts with RECPHEC on July 1st at Hotel Orchid to discuss and focus on the important multidimensional issues of open spaces. The objectives behind it was to identify and discuss the importance of open space in Kathmandu Valley providing a  common forum for people to share their opinion and to identify the collaborative effort in making Kathmandu a liveable city.

What is Urban Dabali???

Urban Dabali is a platform where people come to access information, share ideas and gain support for development relating to urban issues bounding with the themes of Urban Dabali. Urban Dabali will not limit its activities to its stakeholders, but will try to make its voice heard in the favor of unfavoured and unserved.



 
Urban Dabali's Objectives

  • Provide a forum for urban stakeholders for the knowledge sharing and dissemination.



  • Explore relevant urban issues in the favour of human security.



  • Advocate urban citizens right and human security issues and influence policy discourse.



  • Support capacity building of stakeholders