MANILA – The Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) on Thursday expressed hope it could finally resume its Gender and Development (GAD) program next year with help from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), after being disrupted for two years by the pandemic.
In a statement sent to the Philippine News Agency (PNA), Carnilo Orevillo, head of the LWUA-GAD Technical Working Group, said the agency's GAD Focal Point System (GFPS) needs to be reconstituted to ensure the continuity of its GAD programs.
“Nonetheless, the existing GFPS and Technical Working Group (TWG)... is however full of optimism for the coming year,” he said, adding that the designation of a new LWUA officer in charge "has given LWUA-GAD its much-needed breath of fresh air.”
Orevillo also said a year-end assessment seminar would also be scheduled so the agency could update its six-year GAD agenda to serve as a guide for LWUA’s priority activities.
On Wednesday, the LWUA met with a representative of the USAID’s Safe Water, a project for water and sanitation sector development in the Philippines, to discuss a possible collaboration, with funding, aimed at strengthening the LWUA GFPS through training programs that they hope would trickle down to the water district level.
“With the continuous support of the present LWUA leadership that will hopefully rub on to the Administrator-to-be, LWUA-GAD may finally get off the ground towards its goal in pursuing full equality and development for both women and men, free from violence, respectful of human rights, supportive of self-determination and use of human potentials,” Orevillo said. “Not only through programs for the agency but more so through the water supply and sanitation projects we are mandated to implement for our water districts clients and their concessionaires so that hopefully, all will realize that really, GAD is good.” (PNA)
