Background:

Under the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj the "Abdul Nazir Sab State Institute of Rural Development" (SIRD) in Mysore extends training to the functionaries of Panchayat Raj Institutions on various skills.  The institute had undertaken training of watermen during the year 2011-12.

The training programme was organised at various locations in the state and the training was conducted by selected 7 Non Governmental Organisations. There are over 20,000 watermen working across the state for 5627 gram panchayats for providing safe drinking water to the villages. In the First phase of the programme, 4994 water men were trained. All the 30 districts and 176 taluks were covered in this training programme.

Methodology:

MOU was signed between SIRD, Mysore and Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST) to carry out an evaluation on the effectiveness of the training programme conducted by the NGOs. The evaluation was carried out by collecting data from 528 villages / gram panchayats taking representation from all the 76 taluks and interviewing around 18 water men in each district.

Highlights of the survey:

• Among the watermen who have been trained, 22% belong to Schedule Cast, 13% belong to Scheduled Tribe, 24% belong to Backward Class and 42% to Others.

• In all the 523 villages, the participants were Men as trained watermen and there were no Women selected and trained in any of the villages

• Educational background of the trained watermen is as follows:
  33% upto 10^th standard, 24% upto 7^th standard, 17% upto 5^th standard, 7% upto 9^th standard and 12^th standard, 2% upto 8^th standard, 1% upto 6^th and 11^th standard  and there are 3% watermen with qualified degree. In total 99% of the watermen are educated above 5^th standard.

• The watermen training programmes were organised by seven NGOs and 97% of the trainees / watermen expressed satisfaction with the organisation as well as the resource person of the training programme. Only 3% of the participants expressed dissatisfaction.

• The impact on the performance of the watermen after the training programme revealed the following:

• 78% of the participants agreed that there is a remarkable improvement in managing water supply

• 18% expressed that there is no change before and after the training programme

• 38% of the trained watermen revealed that they have impressed the public and brought awareness among the public in the villages on effective water supply system.

Suggestions and recommendations:

1. Training of watermen has brought in a positive change to deliver what is required by them and to deal with the field level site specific situations.

2. Training of watermen by agencies with good experience will bring in attitudinal change in the behavior of watermen.

3. Technical training and hands on experience need more involvement of the participants in the practical aspects with demonstrations.

4. Social behavioural concepts and attitudinal changes required to deal with public need to be incorporated in the curriculum of the training content.

5. Feedbacks from the trained watermen need to be collected with time by the NGOs to fine-tune future training programmes.

6. A mechanism need to be brought in place to address the grievances of the watermen under Panchayath Raj Institutions.

Project Completion:

The project completion report was prepared and submitted to Government along with Utilization certificate.

Click on this link to view detailed project report