Mayor meets SDA delegation

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Mayor of Ulaanbaatar city E.Bat-Uul received Wednesday a delegation headed by Ms Denise Luthi, a chairwoman of the East Asia Division of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The sides exchanged views on the urbanization, decentralization, support for local governance, and assistance from the SDC. Ms Luthi noted that the SDC has been collaborating with Mongolia for a decade in three main directions as the food safety, within the agricultural sector, an enforcement of the vocational training centers, within the education sphere, and a cooperation with the capital city in frames of governance. "Since a half of Mongolia’s population lives in Ulaanbaatar, I am pleased to share my views on tackling problems related to the UB city's urbanization and on realizing relevant to this projects and programmes,” Ms Luthi said. In response, the Mayor pointed out that Mongolia is making some reforms in order to form a system that allows people to make decisions with their participation as stated by the Constitution of Mongolia. "Switzerland has plenty of experience in it, so Mongolia wants to collaborate with the SDC in running these reforms". "Mongolia is implementing a housing programme under a public poll, but we have some problems such as conflicts of interests. We organized a poll among residents of Baganuur and Nalaikh districts whether Nalaikh district should become a city, and presented them a project about developing the city and its rules. All these have been focusing on transmitting into the decision-making system with a civil participation, and Mongolia aspires to cooperate with the SDC in it," the Mayor said. Ms Luthi said the SDC is ready to cooperate with Mongolia in developing the public participation-based governance and the democracy.