The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Royal Norwegian Embassy on Thursday signed a 4 million dollars addendum to their existing cost sharing agreement for the Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE) project to empower and engage community in decision making process.
On behalf of Norway, Alf Arne Ramslien, Charge d´Affaire signed the agreement along with Haoliang Xu, Resident Representative of UNDP in the presence of Daniyal Aziz, Chairman, National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB).
Through this addendum Norway will make an additional contribution of four million dollars to this project which is in addition to two million dollars contributed in 2004.
Apart from UNDP and Norway, Canadian International Development Agency (Cida), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Department for International Development (DFID), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC) are also among the other donors. DTCE has expanded its operations to 28 districts after successfully running its programmes in 13 districts.
The objective of this project is citizens and community empowerment in decision making. As a result, more than 40 percent of the over 24,000 Citizen Community Boards (CCBs) at the grass roots level across the country can be attributed to the DTCE project interventions. Haoliang Xu, on this occasion, said "This project will be operational by 2009 in all districts of Pakistan.