Sindh Coastal and Inland Community Development project, which was commenced in August 2005, will complete during this month. This was stated by a spokesman of Sindh Planning and Development Department here on Saturday.
The Asian Development Bank funded the feasibility study under Preparatory Technical Assistance (PPTA) programme, which is based on an integral approach.
During study period, the international and local consultants undertook a series of physical inspections of coastal areas of Thatta, Badin and Karachi and held meetings with vulnerable coastal communities to find out their needs and issues to evolve a strategy to mitigate vulnerability.
This was the first-ever feasibility designed through periodical consultative workshops held at Thatta, Badin and Karachi with participation of all the stakeholders including representatives from coastal areas.
The ADB's PPTA team has so far conducted seven workshops in three main targeted coastal areas of Sindh and attended by over 350 representatives from affected communities, civil society and by district and provincial governments.
These workshops were supported with over 30 field visits to targeted communities besides extensive discussions with civil society organisations. The main stakeholders consulted and their views obtained were IUCH, WWF, Badin Reconstruction Development Society (BRDS), HANDS, Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum (PFFF), Unicef, Aurat Foundation, Village Development Organisation (VDO) Thatta etc.
The spokesman pointed out that Technical Assistance was a multi-sectoral approach launched to mitigate extreme poverty in the area due to shocks and natural disasters from time to time.
He said the Sindh government had also shown serious concern over the negative attitude of some NGOs who seemed to aim at hindering the development activities being planned to alleviate poverty of coastal inhabitants.
He said the claim of such NGOs that Project documents had been prepared without consultation with the coastal communities was absurd and seemed to have arisen out of some personal motive.
According to him, the issues of LBOD tidal link, disaster management and of fresh water down stream of the Kotri Barrage were not part of this PPTA and were beyond the scope of this study which were spelled out by experts in all consultative workshops.
The Government of Sindh, spokesman added, was committed to provide equal opportunities to all segments of the society, more particularly to the coastal communities and fully supports the ADB efforts.
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