January 07, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 27, 1428

Pakistan continues to be plagued by failure of public services. Whether it is health, education, water supply and sanitation or security, successive governments have failed to provide a reasonable standard of service delivery to the ordinary people.

Previously, people blamed the unavailability of fiscal resources for this situation but the current increase in public expenditures has belied the claim. Although, millions more are being spent, service standards keep deteriorating.

The reasons of these falling standards are complex and location-specific. However, experts have been able to pinpoint three problem areas where change can lead to improvement.

The first problem with the public service delivery is that it misses the target. Contrary to most assumptions, public services benefit the rich people (who can arrange/pay for private service also) more than the poor. Examples of this phenomena can be found everywhere.

In government hospitals, poor people wait for hours in queues, while influential people take most of the time of doctors. In education, most of the scholarships available are used by children whose parents can pay for their education. Moreover, millions of poor people are still without basic facilities like running water, sanitation and electricity while a small percentage of people enjoy it.

The second problem with service delivery is the fact that most of the money allocated to social services never reaches the frontline service providers.

Nobody can deny that ordinary teachers, policemen and doctors in rural areas are paid meagre amounts and are not trained regularly to upgrade their skills. Moreover, they are not provided buildings, equipment and other facilities to do their work properly. Rural health centres are usually without medicines and schools without boundary walls, roofs and books. Recently, the World Bank pinpointed in one of its reports that 80 per cent of social sector spending meant for poor is spent elsewhere.

Finally, poor get a lower service quality than rich. Public services, when provided to poor, are irregular and non-dependable. Absenteeism of teachers and doctors is endemic in rural areas where most of the poor live.

Low quality water supply and sanitation services in poor neighbourhoods have resulted in spread of epidemics like hepatitis-c and electricity load shedding continues for eight to ten hours in poor rural hinterlands while prosperous urban areas suffer for only 39 minutes.

Other developing countries face the same predicaments. In Bangladesh, the absenteeism of doctors in primary health care centres is 74 per cent. Seventy per cent of government drugs disappeared in Guinea and in Uganda, only 13 per cent of non-recurrent spending on primary education reaches primary schools.

The important question is: how to improve the situation? A one word solution to all these issues is ‘accountability’.

Accountability will lead to better selection of schemes, better management of funds and better monitoring and evaluation. A careful review of international best practices has generated the following measures to increase accountability of public officials.

Decentralisation of powers intrinsically leads to increased accountability which leads to transfer of power to local people by providing them better information who are then in a better position of deciding how access and quality of service delivery can be increased cost effectively. They can, therefore, argue with the officials and will not allow officials to take wrong decisions.

One may question this suggestion as decentralisation has not resulted in a major improvement in service delivery standards. However, if we look closely, it is clear that decentralisation is more artificial as most of the powers still remain concentrated in the hands of district nazims, whose indirect election can be influenced by federal, provincial and military governments.

Therefore, during the last six years, district nazims have looked more towards Islamabad for approval and re-election than districts.

Accountability can also be increased by improving the flow of information. As people have more information about budgets, employment opportunities and development schemes, sooner or later, they will ask questions. The government has made some changes to improve the access to information.

Local Bodies Ordinances promulgated in all the four provinces have tried to increase access of information for ordinary people.

Implementation of these ordinances is, however slow, so accountability has not improved. Community development is another way to improve the service delivery.

In developed countries, people can stop corrupt and inefficient officials from misusing their powers rights because people there are organised in the form of political parties and other civic organisations.

Pakistan has started to move in the right direction as government has appointed executive district officers (EDOs) for community development is each district for the sole purpose of organising people. However, very few EDOs have taken their job seriously.

This analysis clearly shows that though problems exist, improvement in service delivery is possible.

Finances and information on how to improve the situation are also available. The only issue is whether our leaders have the will to take the necessary steps.