ISLAMABAD, Oct 24: Social audit is a powerful instrument to track the effects of devolution and fine-tune policies and their implementation, the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) chairman, Daniyal Aziz, said here on Friday.

He was speaking at the launching ceremony of a baseline survey 2002 on ‘Social Audit of Governance and Delivery of Public Services’, carried out by the Community Information Empowerment and Training (CIET) with the financial assistance of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

In his welcome speech, Mr Aziz said social audit was a methodology developed by CIET, a new concept in Pakistan to provide policymakers basic information about the onground situation across the provinces.

He said the baseline survey would help district governments to make the best use of their new powers and authorities to plan and implement services tailored to the needs of their local population.

Similarly, it would also provide a mean for citizens to participate in an informed way in decisions that effect their lives. The CIET survey provides a picture of the state of public services.

“We hope that under the devolution we can improve public services and involve citizens in monitoring these services,” Mr Aziz said.

He said the results of this baseline survey were being shared widely with policymakers, service providers and communities. Districts can also see how they line up against provincial and national figures, and the findings serve as a benchmark for service improvements.

The social audit will be repeated annually, both monitoring the impact of devolution and allowing policies to be adapted according to evidence of what works and where.

The next national survey is planned to start in December 2003, the NRB chairman said.

He said although there was much variation across the country, satisfaction with public services did not run high at the time devolution began, especially among the poorest citizens. They often had no access to basic services at all, he added.

According to the baseline survey, a few people are satisfied with environmental services like sanitation and garbage disposal. Half the households had no sewerage system, seven out of 10 had no garbage disposal service, eight out of 10 lacked gas supply, and six out of 10 had no government water supply.

It looked in detail at people’s perceptions in the past on issues like use and experience of health, education, police and judiciary services. Access was limited and many who did use the services were not satisfied, especially the poor.

Less than a quarter of households were satisfied with available public health services, and a third said they had no access to these services. Nine out of 10 people paid for use of public health services, which cost them almost as much as private ones. Many people used private alternatives to public health services in places where they were available.

About health services, the survey says that just 23 per cent of the households are satisfied overall with government health services while 32 per cent say they have no access to a government health service.

In respect of education, over half of the households, 55 per cent are satisfied with the government education services in their area and only seven per cent say they have no service available.

Likewise, only 18 per cent of households nationally reported satisfaction with government water supply and 62 per cent say they have no access to government water supply.

When asked, some 46 per cent of the households said they thought courts were there to help them. Many people, especially women, were unable to give a definite response to this question.

However, only eight per cent of the households reported a contact with the courts in the last five years.

Speaking on the occasion as chief guest, the newly appointed Canadian high commissioner, Margaret Huber, argued that such surveys were of critical importance to good governance.

She said in Canada, people could approach public service organizations through a specially designed computer network and their suggestions played an important role in improving public services.