Background: The Constitution of Nepal has transformed a centralized unitary Nepal into the federal state by guaranteeing the devolution of power to the sub national governments. Nepal has now three tiers government with exclusive as well as concurrent powers and responsibilities as per the Constitution with the vision to ensure equality, prosperity and social justice. In the given context, PLGSP has been implemented with the goal to achieve fully functional, sustainable, inclusive and accountable provincial and local government throughout the nation.
In line with the vision of the constitution to promote inclusive and equity-based society with prosperity and social justice; Local Government Operation Act, 2074; and commitment made by the state at international level regarding gender equality and social inclusion, GESI Audit should be adopted as one of the main tool to promote and ensure GESI mainstreaming throughout the scope of Local government from law and policy formulation, planning, budgeting to service delivery, program implementation, monitoring and reporting. Hence, PLGSP has planned to support all 137 LGs to conduct GESI Audit. With the aim to prepare a pool of resource person who will be mobilized in Local Governments to conduct GESI Audit, a ToT program has been planned.
Objectives: The main objective of ToT is to enhance participants knowledge and skills in conducting GESI Audit of LG based on the Local Government’s GESI Audit Guideline, 2078.
The specific objectives of this program are:
- To build common understanding about the different dimensions of GESI in terms of Local Government;
- To develop clarity on all indicators of GESI Audit
- To capacitate participants on the steps, methodology, forms and formats based on Local Government’s GESI Audit Guideline, 2078.
- To enhance clarity on working modality
The program was informally started with the welcome remarks by the GESI Expert, PLGSP/Province 1 Tshering Yodin Sherpa. She gave a brief introduction about PLGSP highlighting the goal and objectives of the program in supporting institutional development as well as individual capacity development of provincial and local government elected representatives and staffs. She also emphasized why and how Gender Equality and Social Inclusion has been considered significant component of PLGSP both as stand-alone and cross cutting issue. She thanked and congratulated all the participants for being part of this program.
Following that, technical sessions on GESI Audit was facilitated by Resource person Kusum Bista. Technical sessions begun with group discussion to develop conceptual clarity on Gender equality and Social Inclusion. Furthermore, introduction to GESI audit was given with WHAT, WHY and HOW to conduct GESI Audit. Most of the sessions were focused on group discussion and exercise on various contents such as scoring on indicators of GESI Audit, preparation of Spider web and bar chart, SWOT Analysis, Action plan preparation and presentation and reporting format. Participants were divided into 8 groups. Throughout the entire training participants remained in the same group.
At the end of the ToT, roles of the PTC and consultants while conducting GESI Audit of LG was made clear. The immediate role of PTC is to submit letters directing all LGs to form a GESI Implementation Committee and a Task Force for GESI Audit. PTC will also request LGs to get al the documents (means of verification for GESI Audit) ready. Account Officer from PTC also presented the tentative budget breakdown for this activity. Speaking at the closing session of the program, Mr. Abhay Kumar Gupta, Section Officer of PTC emphasized the significance of GESI Audit in Local Government and the role the participants of ToT are going to play.
