By Nangamso Mabindla
29 November 2006

A GENDER policy and strategy are on the cards after Buffalo City kicked off the 16 Days of Activism campaign against woman and child abuse with a workshop.

The workshop, held at the East London City Hall, aimed to develop a gender policy and strategy to mainstream gender in local government as an employer and a service provider. The 16 Days campaign is a national initiative held each year to focus on the fight against gender violence and child abuse.

The development of the gender policy, which aims to involve all six municipal directorates in gender issues, is funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida).

Attended by the Speaker of council, Luluka Simon, the workshop dealt with gender equity in the workplace and in the greater Buffalo City community. Some of the issues discussed included women accessing basic services and productive resources, access to information and the economic empowerment of women.

Speaking about the workshop and the importance of mainstreaming gender equality in local government, Celine Mars of Umhlaba Development Services, the consultants responsible for developing a gender policy for the City, said that gender issues needed to be dealt with in municipal Integrated Development Programmes (IDPs).

"Local government needs to mainstream gender in the IDP process and define how gender issues impact on a municipality both internally and externally, and this will be addressed in the IDP processes," she said.

Cities also needed to ensure adequate representation of women during the whole process of public participation activities, and through the IDP representative forum.

"Women have a close relationship with their communities, and an intimate knowledge, so they are important agents for change," Mars added.

Turning her attention to the response of City councillors and officials at the workshop, Mars said that she was happy with how seriously they took the issue of gender in local government. "They were all showing interest and the desire to have gender issues addressed in the municipality."

Shaun Petzer, from the municipality's special programmes unit, said the workshop report would be circulated to delegates in December, with a follow up workshop in January.

"The whole participatory process will be completed by 2007 and given to the council for approval. We wanted the developmental stages of our policy to coincide with the 16 Days of Activism. I would like to thank Sida for the assistance given to the development of the gender policy," he said.

The municipality also planned activities to celebrate World Aids Month in December.

"One of most important of these activities will be the launch of our HIV and Aids workplace peer education programme on December 7 and 8 in East London and King William's Town," Petzer said.