In his welcome remarks, Mr. Brian Arbogast, Director, Water Sanitation & Hygiene, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, highlighted the scale of challenges in delivering safe sanitation services to everyone in the world. "With almost half of the world population still lacking access to safe sanitation and management, we realized that we needed different approaches to reach this incredibly aspirational goal. Climate change is having a bigger impact and with the rapid urbanization, challenges are becoming harder", he said.
Providing his closing remarks, Prof. Kazuo Yamamoto, AIT President, said, "With a legacy of 60 years of working on water and sanitation sector, we believe that AIT has a greater role to play in improving the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond and therefore, we are very much happy and honored to host the GWSC". He expressed appreciation to the Foundation and the esteemed partners for their trust and committed to provide fullest support from the Institute to fulfill the vision and mission of GWSC.
The GWSC initially has four initiatives: The establishment of Technical Assistance Hub (TA Hub), Development and scaling up of Integrated Municipal Information System (IMIS), Improvement of the National Sanitation Dashboard (NSD) and Women in Sanitation Enterprises Project (WISE)
Present at the GWSC launch ceremony were Brian Arbogast, director of the foundation's Water Sanitation and Hygiene Division; his deputy Dr Roshan Shrestha; Bangladesh Ambassador to Thailand Mohammed Abdul Hye; Nepal Ambassador Ganesh Prasad Dhakal; Dhaka mayor Atiqul Islam; chair of AIT's management committee Dr. Anat Arbhabirama; AIT President Prof Kazuo Yamamoto; and GWSC directors Prof. Sangam Shrestha and Prof Thammarat Koottatep.
Source: GWSC
