Staff Report
A two-day District Level Training was arranged for Government Officials to mainstream SDGs at District Level. Local Councils Association Sindh implemented this two-day training session with the financial support of the European Union and the United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific under the LEAD for SDGs’ Localisation in Pakistan Programme.
Government officials hailing from four districts of Sindh; Sukkur, Khairpur, Shikarpur and Ghotki working in the departments of Local Government, Education, Health, Social Welfare, Public Health Engneering, Finance and Planning & Development actively participated in the training.
It is indispensable to form district task forces at the lower level so they can avail all the available resources and methods to achieve effective localisation of SDGs. They should come together at the forums where experts from diverse fields share their suggestions to accelerate the process of monitoring and localizing the Sustainable Development Goals in Sindh.
Javed Kumbar, DC Sukkur graced the event on day one and said that it is necessary to arrange such training sessions which can build the capacity of government officials and CSOs, so they can work together to amplify the localisation and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) till 2030 in Sindh.
Day one kick-started with the successful sessions comprising a detailed introduction to SDGs, and the participants were capacitated with the understanding of International, National, and Provincial level SDGs frameworks. The discourse of training includes the background and context of SDGs along with detailed knowledge about the global agenda 2030 and National commitment towards the 2030 agenda.
The participants formed the group as per the district clusters and department relevance, afterwards they engaged in group work to identify prioritized SDGs targets for the beforementioned districts.
On day two, the participants performed the exercises regarding SDG data collection, monitoring and reporting following the group activity for proposing actions to mainstream SDGs at the district level. The challenges of monitoring and reporting SDGs are continuous and concerned, it is necessary to focus on the active prioritisation and alignment of SDGs with our current projects, said Safdar Ameer, DDO Education, Shikarpur.
The suggestions came on the floor, regarding the formulation of task forces at the district level. These task forces shall align all the relevant policies, legislations, coordinations, ongoing developments and projects with the SDGs. In this regard, CSOs, academia, and research centres should support the government departments in achieving Agenda 2030.
The floor suggested, that adapting the habit of reporting SDG prioritised activities in the Voluntary Sub-national Reviews is necessary. The participants recognized the efforts of the United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific, as LEAD for SDGs Localisation programme with the technical and financial support of UCLG World, implementing innovative initiatives for the effective localisation, monitoring, and reporting of SDGs at all levels.
The responsibilities and functions of local governments were inculcated in the training. Where the participants exercised and pondered on how the local tiers are significant to implementing SDGs. The government officials uncover the grassroots level facts regarding sources of finances for local governments while proposing more funding options to strengthen the local government structure.
Unquestionably, monitoring should be a continuous process. All the departments pledged to actively involve themselves in the data gathering, monitoring and reporting process.
Aijaz Khuwaja, Consultant and Fiza Rani Pitafi, Coordinator LCAS facilitated the two-day training session with the support of the team from LEAD for SDGs Localisation in Pakistan Programme.
Chief Guest, Tariq Abbas Qureshi, Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Sukkur distributed certificates among the participants.
While signing off the meeting, all the participants praised the unique initiatives arranged by the partner organisations of LCAS, EU and UCLG-ASPAC under the LEAD for SDGs Localisation in Pakistan Programme.