Sri Lanka: Environmental Engineering Technician - Senior Gender Assistant
Jan 25, 2020
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UN Office for Project Services
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UNOPS in Sri Lanka is based in Colombo and is responsible for helping the Government of Sri Lanka and partner organizations deliver social and economic rehabilitation in areas affected by the 2004 tsunami and decades of armed conflict. UNOPS in Sri Lanka helps partners achieve their project goals in sectors including physical infrastructure, the environment and poverty mitigation.
Communities in Puttalam and Mannar feel they have not reaped adequate peace dividends, resulting in underlying tensions. Following the recent attacks in April 2019, this is now an even more critical, timely initiative to address current tensions, especially considering the ethno-religious composition of the two districts, as the willingness of communities to engage in traditional peacebuilding initiatives is low.
This project takes an innovative, integrated approach to peacebuilding, tackling ethno-religious tensions by bringing communities together to provide a sustainable solution for a shared environmental issue, with women at the forefront for conflict prevention. The nexus of Environmental Conflicts – Gender – Communal Tensions is unique, and a new area of peacebuilding not yet explored in Sri Lanka. Moreover, efforts to develop a women-led initiative in de-escalating religious intolerance and violent extremism are minimal.
It is a focused initiative, within the specific context of Puttalam and Mannar, looking at environmental conflicts caused through poor waste management, considering waste is not a gender-neutral concept. The perceived lack of adequate interest by the State has left this issue unresolved, providing an opportunity for communities - particularly women - to develop conflict prevention and resolution skills in relation to the issue of SWM, which can be transferable for solving other communal tensions. This will provide a sense of ownership to citizens over solutions provided to address current issues such as SWM and others in the future. As part of the local governance structure, sustainability beyond the project cycle can be ensured.
The project focuses on women’s role within their communities to support conflict prevention in a context of religious intolerance and violent extremism. Gendered division of household labour results in women being mostly responsible for waste management, hence they play critical roles in responding to environmental degradation at community level. Women’s political engagement results in greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs, often increasing cooperation across party and ethno-religious lines, delivering more sustainable peace. Despite high involvement in communities, women remain under-represented in policy and decision-making; their experiences and skills are often overlooked.
Women are uniquely positioned within families/communities to influence motivations that drive individuals to support intolerant ideologies or violence. Their gendered roles in shaping and informing families and communities allow women to support in countering intolerant narratives, mistrust and fear, which converge to exacerbate tensions and promote violence. Empowering women – in political, economic, social, religious spheres – resulted in religious moderation, tolerance and curbing radicalization among youth.
Functional Responsibilities
The Environmental Engineering Technician - Senior Assistant will be assisting the Project Manager (PM) for the improvement of waste management system of local authorities in Puttalam District for the setting-up of a customer-oriented waste management services: implementation of efficient solid waste collection and segregation scheme, operationalize composting facility, organize recycling activities, eliminating illegal dumpsite and related operation. The successful applicant will ideally come from a trade background (but not necessarily), have experience in solid waste and project management, a sound understanding of the operation of solid waste facilities and waste collection, including excellent time management and people skills.
The Environmental Engineering Technician - Senior Assistant will be responsible for the following areas of Waste Segregation, Collection, Transfer and secure Disposal:
Administrative and Technical Support
- Support in the development and installation of efficient waste collection systems.
- May assist stakeholders to supervise transportation services including client service, regular vehicle maintenance, insurance, and monitoring of consumption.
- Promptly reports and investigates vehicle accidents, damage, loss or theft of items; update and maintenance of vehicle history report.
- Supervises external contractors for transportation services, including client service and processing of invoices.
- Follows up on deadlines, commitments made, actions taken and coordination of collection and submission of the reports to supervisor.
- Assist the PM to research and retrieves statistical information from internal and external sources; prepares statistical charts, tables and reports, extracting data from various sources.
- Assist local authorities to conduct a survey and upgrade waste segregation practices at sources and to develop conditions and standards linked solid waste management.
- Assess solid waste management situations in the target area and provide timely information to the PM to establish possible mitigation measures. Assists local authorities’ supervisors to establish appropriate recording, monitoring and reporting systems for waste management.
- Map illegal dumpsites and provide suggestions on closure techniques.
- Support with the development of detailed drawings, bill of quantities and assist other team members to develop work contracts.
- Support the PM to monitor contractors or partners involved in development initiatives. This includes but not limited to site site supervision, health and safety, resources mobilization, labourer management, etc.
- Support clean-up programs in the targeted project areas and undertake other tasks assigned by management.
Knowledge Building and Knowledge sharing
- Support the organization and delivery of training for Local Authorities' waste collection staff.
- Support the knowledge sharing of technically viable and financially feasible solutions for solid waste management issues in the target areas.
- Provides sound contributions to the knowledge sharing process by synthesizing lessons learnt and best practices to support the authorities to explicitly understand their roles and responsibility.
- Contributes feedback, ideas, and internal knowledge about processes and best practices and utilize productively
- Maintains unit’s documentation including records and files, ensuring safekeeping of confidential materials
Monitoring and Progress Controls
- Implementation and delivery of the required outputs as per time, cost and quality . Submission of regular report update to Project Manager.
- Maintained daily diaries of work.
Qualifications
Education
- Secondary school education is required.
- A National Diploma or Certificate in Civil engineering or a Bachelor's degree may be considered in lieu for some or all of the required years of experience.
- Training certificates related to solid waste management, community education and mobilization, and/or other relevant areas will be an advantage;
- Certificate in standard computer applications including MS office and AutoCAD is highly desirable.
Work Experience
- At least 5 years of experience in general construction works, community organizing, community development works, and/or other various fields of social mobilization
- Minimum 1 year of experience of working with local authorities especially in construction projects.
- Experience in working with local authority officials and staff to implement development projects particularly in the field of solid waste management is an asset.
- Experience in administrative and procurement works for SWM facility operations support and related activities is desired.
- Experience preparing monitoring reports, progress / accomplishment reports.
- Previous working experience in conflict affected areas is an advantage
- Experience in working with women empowerment projects is desired.
- Experience working with UN agencies and other international organization will be an advantage
- Experience in computer operation : MS office and AutoCAD is required.
Language Requirements
- Good understanding of written and oral English is essential.
- Working knowledge of one or more of the local languages is highly desired.
Contract information
Contract type: ICA
Contract level: Local ICA Support
Contract duration: Open-ended, subject to organizational requirements, availability of funds and satisfactory performance.
For more details about the ICA contractual modality, please follow this link:
Additional considerations
- Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
- Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
- Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
- Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
- UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
- Work-life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
- UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
- For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
- The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.
- The position is applicable to Sri Lankan nationals only