OSCE concludes workshops for Turkmenistan officials on effective water management practices

DASHOGUZ, Turkmenistan, 29 May 2013 – An OSCE-supported series of workshops on modern technologies of water resources management concluded in Dashoguz in western Turkmenistan today.

The OSCE Centre in Ashgabat held the courses in Serdar, the Balkan region and Dashoguz.

During the workshops, officials from the local units of the Water Economy Ministry received training on creating and updating comprehensive databases of the existing irrigation infrastructure. An international expert from Bulgaria shared expertise in using the software and equipment, as well as maps based on Geographic Information System (GIS) and GPS.

“Mapping is an important component in irrigation district management and operations,” said Ambassador Ivo Petrov, the Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.

“These workshops mark a successful completion of the activities that the OSCE Centre, in close co-operation with the Water Economy Ministry, has implemented for the past three years to promote the use of Geographic Information System at the local level as an effective tool for the operation and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure in Turkmenistan.”

The project was launched in 2011 in the Lebap region in eastern Turkmenistan and expanded throughout the country to cover most of the arid zones of the country. An important element of the project was training officials of the local water administration units to develop new computerized databases and management systems for water distribution network in different regions of the country. It also included provision of computer equipment, software licenses and GPS units and training materials to local water administration entities, and facilitation of field trips to each region to collect data using GPS devices.