February 04, 2008	Monday	Muharram 25, 1429

SOCIAL uplift suffers in the NWFP because of inefficiency, waste and lack of an effective mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of development projects at grassroots level.

The weak implementation of devolution programme has impacted thesocial service delivery and development cycle.

The district and Tehsil administrations are responsible for service delivery of health, education, water supply etc. They handle new development works within their ambit.

Mr Khalid Aziz, a former bureaucrat, critical of the devolution initiative, believes that district governments are not functioning properly.

Mr Aziz, a chief secretary in NWFP, has authored a number of studies on development as well as social service delivery in the post-decentralisation scenario.

On the basis of a study on the heath sector performance after devolution, he says that service delivery has badly been affected after the new system of governance.

”The steps necessary for making devolution effective have yet to be taken as administrative, functional and fiscal devolution are far from complete. This produces weak accountability, both of policymakers to citizens for poor service delivery and of service-providing staff to policymakers,” he explains.

Enhancing the citizens’ voice in public sector programmes was one of the main objectives behind the present form of local government system under the Local Government Ordinance 2001.

Under this law, all the three tiers of governance i.e district, Tehsil and union have been delegated powers to undertake development projects within their respective domains for which they receive resources from the provincial government under the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) Award.

Under the PFC Award resources are distributed among districts Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) through a multi-factoral formula which gives 60 per cent weightage to population and 20 per cent each to poverty and deficient in infrastructure.

The district government had been receiving nearly Rs1 billion funds for their Annual Development Programmes (ADPs) since 2002, while allocation under this head has been increased up to Rs1.20 billion in the current financial year.

The district governments, according to experts, have inherited a weak implementation machinery as is evident from the fact that the utilisation of uplift funds doesn’t exceed 40 per cent of the total allocation annually.

For example, out of Rs1.20 billion allocation, the district governments’ utilisation by end of second quarter is not more than 10 percent, informs an official.

This is mainly because the district government does not have the capacity to absorb such amount, which results in re-appropriation of funds by diverting money from inactive projects to those, where funds spending are fast.

Officials at the Planning and Development Department (P&DD) say that project designing and management are specialised fields, adding that even departments at provincial level lack expertise in these areas.

Under the LGO-2001, the District Planning Officer (DPO) is responsible for planning of projects and their subsequent monitoring at district level making it one of the most important jobs at the local level.

But, according to officials, in most of the districts non-technical persons are doing this crucial job.

”When you place a tehsildar or magistrate for such technical jobs, you should not expect from him that he will deliver,” says a disgruntled planner at the P&DD.

The NWFP government seems helpless in putting things on the right track, but according to some officials, the situation will improve within next few years when members of newly created Provincial Management Service (PMS) are inducted.

According to them, syllabus for the members of PMS has been revised by incorporating the subjects of planning and development in it. They believe that new officers will be able to design and manage projects. Apart from paucity of technical hands at local level, the overall development model, the experts say, is also defective that doesn’t promote planning on the basis of need.

”Implementing agencies, whether at provincial or local level, are following some sort of colonial model of development, where decisions are taken on political reasons and not on need basis,” says Mr Aziz.

The governments, in his view, whether provincial or local, set their priorities for which they ensure resource availability at the cost of other neglected areas.

According to him, increasing the public voices in formulation of development project was stated to be one of the primary objectives of the devolution plan; however, this has not materialised yet.

The LGO-2001 offers the formation of Citizens Community Boards (CCBs) mainly to achieve this objective, but it has also proved to be a futile exercise, as most of the CCBs have been constituted on political basis. He believes this can be improved with active involvement of community-based organisations.

Poor monitoring and evolution of development project is also causing wastage of resources in a province.

At provincial level, there is only a small Monitoring and Evolution Unit at the P&DD having only six member staff. This unit has to monitor 375 projects annually from a total portfolio of about 1,000 projects. Its monitoring work is only focused on inspection of civil work.

Situation at district level is more disappointing, where no monitoring and evolution units exist to ensure quality and physical viability of a project.

Under LGO-2001, the district governments have the powers of setting up monitoring committees comprising elected representatives. This arrangement is also proving fruitless.

According to Mr Aziz, every district government in the Frontier Province have constituted monitoring committees, which in real terms are not working Properly.

”Monitoring or evolution is a complex and important phase for development activities, which the office-bearers in local bodies system ignore just to avoid confrontation with their counterparts. While in some areas it is used to create controversies for political gains,” he observes.

When contacted, a senior official in the NWFP government conceded that monitoring and evolution mechanism for development projects was weak. He, however, clarified that the provincial government now preparing a strategy through which monitoring and evaluation would also be devolved to the district governments.