A total of 12 participants from Majlis Bandaraya Pulau Pinang (MBPP), Jabatan Pengaliran dan Saliran (JPS-PERLIS), Lembaga Sumber Air Negeri Kedah, Lembaga Urus Air Selangor, Majlis Bandaraya Shah Alam, and WWF-Malaysia participated in the training course programme Introduction to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for three days starting from June 13 to 15 June 2022.
The programme aims to provide information sharing on the water in Malaysia in collaboration with the Water Watch Penang (WWP), UNESCO CPI, and supported by the Global Environment Center (GEC) and the School of Humanities, USM.
The objective of this course is to increase understanding of the importance of IWRM in planning and managing water resources at the river basin level and also to build confidence among administrative officers and managers in promoting IWRM as a practical solution to resolving water issues at the state and district levels.
In addition, CPD time is also provided by the Board of Engineers, Malaysia, and Malaysia Board of Technologists, which is for 15 hours.
WWP President, Prof. Chan Ngai Weng, began his speech where he said water is an invaluable natural treasure. We need water to live our daily lives because it is an important resource in generating various economic fields such as agriculture, industry, fisheries, electricity generation, and so on.
After that, the programme continued with a course conducted by Dr. Zelina Zaiton Ibrahim, who explained the Introduction and Principles of IWRM to the participants that day. After that, Dr. Tan Mou Leong conducted the next course, which was GIS & Remote Sensing in IWRM, to the participants, where they could see the coordinates of the areas searched from the satellite.
In addition, the course in the afternoon was managed by Ir. Dr. Salmah Zakaria where she explained about Water Governance followed by Dr. Kalithasan Kailasan in the next session on Water Quality – Monitoring and Evaluation.
The second day continued with outdoor activities where participants were taken to the training site in Taman Jajar, Sungai Ara, Penang in the morning until noon where they were required to form two groups to test the quality of river water and find the habitat of insects that live in the river. Next, the course was conducted by Ir. Dr. Salmah Zakaria who gave a presentation on Water Dangers – Floods and Droughts, Climate Change Projections and followed by WST2040 – Water Sector Transformation by 2040.
The last day of the course ended with a ‘role play’ activity where each of the participants was given a character to play based on a given situation regarding water problems in one district for one hour.
The course conducted for 3 days has provided in-depth and more detailed knowledge and discussion on the water situation currently facing the country.
