November 14, 2008	Friday	Ziqa'ad 15, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 13: While some people express their dissatisfaction with the service delivery mechanism, majority of the masses support democratically elected governments and believe that properly functional local government is the best method for improving their quality of life, says a report.

The report on “Local government system: citizens perceptions and preferences” prepared by AC Nielsen the Urban Institute under a project titled Districts That Work (DTW), was launched here on Thursday.

The report observes that while the people give priority to the services related to education, health, safe drinking water, drainage, garbage collection etc, the local governments are giving priority to the construction of roads.

Referring to the indirect elections of the town/taluka and city/district nazims, the report says that it is generally acknowledged that the current system of indirect elections of district and tehsil nazims offer opportunities for collusion and corruption and erode the political accountability of local government executives. However, if required, a new system will have to be carefully designed according to the electoral system to guarantee effective political representation.The additional chief secretary for local government, Ghulam Ali Shah Pasha, said that valuable information had been presented in this preliminary report and, hopefully, when the final report came in a couple of months, it would provide more concrete recommendations.

These recommendations would be considered when the government wanted to review the local government system to make it more effective and responsive to the public expectations, he said.He said that the study showed that a large number of people had expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of service delivery in the education and health sectors while many others said that medicines were not provided which was a serious issue.

Citing an example, he said that school management committees were formed in many schools which improved the quality of education there. Steps in other fields for quality improvement would also be taken.

Earlier, William Cartier of the DTW project presented the report and said that a large number of people were not satisfied with the services provided by local governments.

“In the field of education from 16 per cent to 65 per cent people identified problems relating to lack of infrastructure, shortage of books, desks and furniture in schools. Similarly, in the field of health, around 34 per cent people said that medical staff was absent in hospitals and almost half of them said medicines were not available.”Most people rated their town and cities as dirty and susceptible to flooding because of a poor drainage system, the report said.

Another thing that the report has highlighted is that the quality and coverage of services in rural areas is worse than in is the urban areas.

It says that when the local government system was introduced during former president Pervez Musharraf’s government it included a mechanism for accountability, but none of the provisions for ensuring the accountability, transparency and responsiveness was actually implemented.

Mr Cartier said that the masses were not allowed to attend the meetings of nazims and councillors where important decisions were taken. People were not provided information by the officials, which created doubts.

He said though most people said they had to pay small bribes for better services, it should be noted that corruption was systematically involved in both elected officials and civil servants.

He said that other studies had also suggested that small-scale corruption was tolerated by senior bureaucrats and elected officials, who had opportunities for large-scale corruption in contracting, supply of medicines, purchase of books, desks etc.

Similarly, he said that doctors and teachers were able to avoid attending to their work because mid-level officials in districts were willing to take bribes to look the other way.

Similarly, medicines were stolen from basic health units and resold in local pharmacies and desks did not get delivered in the quality and quantity contracted.

He said that without improvement in accountability and transparency, widespread corruption in local government would continue unabated and service quality and coverage would not improve substantially.

Most people felt that the local government could be more effective if they were more accountable, he concluded.

Khairpur District Nazim Nasir Shah said that projects aimed at creating awareness among the masses regarding civic sense and duties should be designed. He said by way of example that people throw garbage on the roads rather than at garbage disposal sites. He said such things complicate problems.

Some other nazims alluded to the issue of political victimisation saying that the provincial government did not release sufficient funds in time and due to that local governments faced difficulties and their service delivery mechanism suffered.

Dr Shamim Ziauddin of the Orangi Pilot Project said that the country was suffering because of continuous interference of imperialistic forces led by the United States for the past 60 years. She said the interference had increased with each passing year.

She stressed that if outside interference in the internal affairs of the country should stop the masses were fully capable of overcoming the problems of the system and would efficiently run the country.

Dr Kevin Curnow of the DTW project and Tehsina Rafi of Nielsen Pakistan also spoke.The organisers made it clear that although the report had been prepared with the financial assistance of the United States, the Urban Institute was responsible for its contents that did not necessarily reflect the views of the American government.