LAHORE, July 21: Social services can best be delivered to the people by decentralization of power to the local levels.

World Bank chief economist for South Asia Dr Shantayanan Devarajan stated this in his talk on "Decentralization and social service delivery" to economists, professionals and senior officers at the Pakistan Administrative Staff College here on Wednesday.

He said social services like healthcare, education, water, sanitation, etc., could be provided to the people by the local administration if there was a system of accountability.

Dr Devarajan said funds were necessary for the provision of social services but experiences of various countries had shown that more often than not the rich got the benefits and not the poor.

He said the studies had shown that there were many reasons for the lack of social services. The service providers like teachers, doctors, etc., had been found absent from schools and hospitals and clinics in many countries, particularly Bangladesh, and the students and patients suffered. Similar was the case with other social services.

In many hospitals drugs were not available to the patients as the drugs supplied by the government disappeared. He said another problem was that enough funds were not made available for the provision of social services to the people and a number of government and local bodies' schools, hospitals and dispensaries failed to deliver.

This was due to administrative snags, lack of coordination, overlapping and inconsistencies of policies. He said El Salvador had solved this problem by forming parents associations with the powers of hiring and firing the teachers and other staff. The members of the parents associations visited the schools regularly to ensure the presence of the staff and the students.

The result was that the performance of both the teachers and students greatly improved. He said social services delivery was also affected in many countries like India by various political pressure groups.

Dr Devarajan said many countries had experimented by giving the social services to NGOs on contract basis and they had found it successful. He said an effective system of accountability was necessary to deliver the social services to the people like the parents' control over schools.

He said decentralization could overcome or exacerbate failures of accountability. Social services delivery could be improved if those responsible for providing them like teachers and doctors were given incentives.