4.1 Support MAB’s
regular operational activities to represent all the municipalities in
Bangladesh and uphold their rights:
With partial support from UNDP, MAB HQ will
mobilize the regional committees to come forward and meet regularly so that
together the mayors can be a bigger part of national and local level policy
changes towards a poverty free urban Bangladesh. In connection to this thought,
after listing the major roles of MAB categorically, quarterly meetings from
regional to central levels are needed to be organized in such manners that it
will represent all the municipalities in the country. These will include
following sub-activity:
·
Complete recruitment
process for the positions as agreed by UNDP/MAB and places the officials with necessary arrangement of
accommodation, logistics and secretariat supports for taking over the
responsibilities derived from the activities at large.
·
Review and update the ToR where applicable in a
more realistic manner for the regional committees a list of major operational
activities of MAB with its eleven regional bodies to facilitate its effective
systemic role of representation of all the municipalities in the country
upholding respective rights.
·
Categorize the activities in order to the
respective priority to be orderly addressed aiming at achieving better MAB
roles as per the laid objectives developing urban local governance.
·
Help systemic formation of MAB regional
committees and supports to be functional as per mandate
· Support organize quarterly meetings of MAB system from the regional to central levels and bringing the development and rights issues of concern forward to the national level for due attention. All the meetings must be recorded with meeting minutes approved by all legitimate members and preserve the minutes electronically so that it can be accessed anytime when required by the members.
4.2 Develop and
enable online system through MAB’s website to store information, database for all
the municipalities in Bangladesh:
A main database platform will be developed to
collect, store and analyze information through MAB’s website. All the
municipalities of Bangladesh will provide information in an online-based
system. Capacity and User interface of the MAB’s website need to be assessed
and if needed will be improved further.
·
Arrange IT supports to improve MAB website and
link the data center with the web interface.
·
Develop datacenter and necessary interfaces for
the municipalities so that they can enter the required data through online and
store in the datacenter. Collection of information from the municipality should
be robust meaning that it should be easily handled but secured, it can be
easily updated, it can directly feed the data to the dashboard of MAB website,
etc. There will be some generic information and some specific
intervention-based information. MAB will also try to build formal partnership
with A2i project of Government of Bangladesh and UNDP to better facilitate the
process and get the results.
·
Make a priority list of contents like information
on the roles and status of Municipalities, urban local governance, contextual
demands on major urban issues, poverty status/pockets, trend of rural-urban
migration and major causes with regional variations that are expected to be
available through the MAB website.
· Develop guidelines and orient the focal persons at the municipalities on the improved online systems and get the municipalities started the data feeding
4.3 Organize a series
of webinars (at least 4) with participation of municipal mayors and document
the lessons learned on nCOVID impact by the MAB members for policy advocacy:
Municipal Association of Bangladesh (MAB) will
organize a series of webinars on the nCOVID-19 impact in participation with the
municipal mayors and a few selected high-level government
officials/ministers. The lessons from each participating municipality
will be discussed and presented by the mayor in the webinar. These lessons will
be documented to reflect the report which will later be used for policy
advocacy.
·
Participating mayors and other members will be
discussing what they have done so far to tackle the nCOVID-19 at the local
level, what challenges they have faced, how they have overcome the challenges,
how the national initiatives helped to face the challenges at the local level,
what more initiatives needs to be taken by the central government to support
effective prevention of the nCOVID-19 and how the livelihoods of the urban poor
can be restored in the city, etc. The discussion points should be published in
the local and national media, for which MAB needs to engage journalists during
these webinars. The engagement of journalists should be as many as possible in
numbers to maximize media coverage.
·
Upon completion of the webinars and after
publishing the news in different newspapers/media, MAB will prepare a scrapbook
containing the news/media coverage and will submit to the LIUPCP. Each of the
Webinar sessions is expected to be 2-3 hours long. The Webinar session will be
moderated by some renowned senior journalists.
· After
completing all the webinars, MAB will prepare a report based on the discussions
and the findings of the webinars with some policy recommendations, which will later
be used for policy briefing. Therefore, in a single webinar, it is expected
that the following participants will be present and actively participate in the
discussion: (i) Mayor-10/12, (ii) Minister / Sr. Bureaucrat - 1/2, (iii) Sr.
Journalist as Moderator - 1, (iv) Journalist (to take notes for news) - 15/20,
and (v) representative from MAB Executive body-1/2.