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Feature: AKPBS Receives Dubai International Award For Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment

The Water and Sanitation Extension Program (WASEP) of the Aga Planning and Building Service, Pakistan was selected for a 2008 DIABP Best Practice Transfer Award.

The Aga Planning and Building Service in Pakistan has received the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment (DIABP). The Award's Jury based their decisions on "tangible impact resulting from the transfer of one or more of the following: ideas, skills, processes, knowledge or expertise, and technology; changes in policies or practices and sustainability of the transfer as part of a continuous process of learning and change". For more information, please see the DIABP website.

Introduction

The Aga Khan Planning and Building Services (AKPBS) works to improve the built environment, particularly housing design and construction, village planning, natural hazard mitigation, environmental sanitation, water supplies, and other living conditions. AKPBS achieves these goals through the provision of material and technical assistance and construction management services for rural and urban areas.

AKPBS acts through national service companies. The service companies plan, organise and finance activities and operate facilities and programmes in close collaboration with other AKDN institutions, government agencies and selected external partnering agencies. The national service companies are officially registered as not-for-profit, non-governmental organisations in each country. The international sponsor of the national service companies is the Aga Khan Planning and Building Services S.A., which is incorporated as a not-for-profit company in Geneva, Switzerland. The Chairman and some or all of the directors of the AKPBS boards in India and Pakistan are appointed by the sponsoring company. All directors serve as volunteers on an unremunerated basis.

The activities of the national service companies are coordinated by the Social Welfare Department at the Aga Khan's Secretariat in France. This is achieved primarily through five-year plans, ten-year projections, annual budget submissions and the provision of technical assistance to country programmes and institutions.

Current priorities

The current priorities of AKPBS are:

• to remain a lead agency in Asia for water and sanitation programme design and implementation in the rural areas;
• to expand capabilities to implement village mapping and planning activities to include disaster mitigation (landslides and flooding prevention, and earthquake structural resistance) and management issues; and
• to achieve optimal cost-recovery methods for low-cost housing and physical infrastructure improvement projects.