June 14, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1428

RAWALPINDI, June 13: Foreign-funded poverty alleviation and community development programmes are undermining rather than supporting the Local Governments (LGs) system in the country, according to the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE).

A report compiled by PIDE says most donor programmes are highly vertical and so in disharmony with LGs. In effect these programmes create a parallel system that entails no participation of real stakeholders such as concerned community and elected representatives of people.

Information gathered by the donors themselves in 2004 made them admit that their programmes induced centralisation, were constraints on local autonomy and undermined the functioning of local governments in planning the development of their districts according to their own priorities, the PIDE report said.

Their “highly vertical programmes” not only undermined accountability and operational efficiency but also created an environment in which funding in the key sectors was largely determined elsewhere.

The PIDE report cited the findings of donors about certain programmes that did not yield desired results as they were not directly under the administrative control of LGs.

A large share of donor project aid is effectively outside the control of the elected leaders responsible for planning and delivering services in their area.

Such drawbacks stunted several programmes funded by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank or federal government.

Programmes such as Family Planning and primary Health Care, Extended Programme on Immunisation, Malaria Control, Directly Observed Treatment System (TB), Khushal Pakistan, Sindh Education Reforms, Drought Emergency Relief Assistance, Punjab Community Water Supply and Sanitation and Education Sector Reforms failed to score “complete success” because of the lack participation and involvement of LGs.

PIDE cited the Project Appraisal Document (PAD) of Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) which said its anti-poverty project was creating a parallel system to that of LGs for funding small scale infrastructure projects and communities through Partner Organizations (POs) and CBOs.

According to the PAD there was no representation of provincial or local governments in PPAF at any level. Even the external audit is conducted by a firm of charted accountants and not by the Auditor General of Pakistan.

PPAF plans to implement 7,434 schemes in the second phase of its project covering 90 districts through 30 POs. These schemes include drinking water supply, irrigation, sanitation, link roads and bridges which are Local Government functions and need to be undertaken by them.

Moreover the selection criteria for infrastructure projects under PPAF go against the Citizen Community Boards (CCBs) rules under LGs.

With no role of LGs, the donors’ projects and programmes show the trend towards centralisation in contrast to the declared policy of government about decentralisation and governance at grass root level.

Each donor project relating to local government functions set up a Steering Committee under the control of provincial government.

The LGs are either not represented in the committees or included only as formality. The executing agency is almost always the provincial line departments, thus vesting control with provincial governments for LGs functions.

The programme implementation arrangements create too many layers, centralise the financial and administrative powers, introduce parallel system of donors and dilute accountability.

The PIDE report suggested that governments at all three levels needed to find ways to bring vertical programmes under local government planning and budgeting system and to lay the ground for a shift to the kinds of formula-based grant systems envisaged in the Local Government Ordinance 2000.

“Since donor-funded projects represent the bulk of the province-local government vertical programmes, reviewing the pipelines of donor projects is the place to start identifying pragmatic opportunities to make this transition,” the PIDE said.