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Nicaragua

A project aiming at incorporating local capacities to promote and use employment generating technologies in the post-Mitch reconstruction works in Nicaragua started in the second half of 1999 for a duration of seven months. A follow-up project in Central America for post-Mitch reconstruction was subsequently presented to interested donors. This project will aim at generating employment, alleviating poverty and generating economic development, through the use of local resources, in particular labour, in post-Mitch programmes and in public investment in general. The duration of this project is proposed to be two years. The main outputs of the project would be the following:

establish strategies for local resource based reconstruction;
work, in the different countries, towards the creation of units that promote policies based on the employment intensive approach, in the ministries responsible for investments;
introduce employment intensive technologies into reconstruction work financed by international organisations and donor agencies;
re-enforce the technical and administrative capacity of the decentralised public sector;
organize and build capacity among local contractors and micro enterprises within the fields of employment intensive technologies and improvement of construction businesses;
guide contractors and microenterprises to work in accordance with ILO's international labour standards.

As part of the Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund (see also under Honduras) process, the EIIP programme participated in the thematic windows for �Economic Governance� and �Culture and Development� in Nicaragua. The joint programming concept note for the Economic Governance window focuses on improving the governance of the water and sanitation sector and the access of rural communities to such services in the underdeveloped, largely indigenous, Caribbean coast of the country, where access to water and sanitation is as low as 20%. The ILO component focuses on capacity building in the selected municipalities and the application of the Integrated Rural Access Planning tool (IRAP) in prioritising interventions in the sector. It also focuses on promoting the participation of local communities and enterprises through the application of labour-based technologies and business improvement training, promoting their accreditation by the National Technological Institute (INATEC) and encouraging the awarding of contracts to them by the Social Investment Fund (FISE), which is responsible for water and sanitation in rural areas. The joint programme for the Culture and Development window centres on cultural recovery and productive development taking advantage of the tourism potential of the region. The ILO component aims to introduce labour-based technologies in the improvement of basic infrastructure in support of tourism, promoting the participation of local indigenous communities and enterprises, and encouraging the development of public-private partnerships with the municipalities involved. Both concept notes have been approved by the Steering Committee, and currently Joint Programme Documents are being prepared for each window. If approved, the Joint Programmes are likely to start in the second half of 2008. Further information can be found on the MDG-F website: www.undp.org/mdgf.

Following a regional training course for consultants on employment intensive investment approaches held in Managua in November, a Latin American forum on employment intensive investments and labour-based technologies has been created for consultants and others involved or with interest in infrastructure investment. If you are interested in joining this forum, you can write an e-mail to listserver@ilo.org, with the words subscribe list-piie in the mail message body, followed by a space and your e-mail address (e.g.: subscribe list-piie tsukamoto@ilo.org).

Nicaragua

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