USAID's survey in Sindh: majority wants local government system to be more accountable

While a large portion of the population in Sindh province is not satisfied with services provided by the local governments, a majority of them continues to believe that they could be more effective if they were more accountable. A majority also believes that the budgeting and project management would improve if local governments were to take into consideration the opinions of the people.
This was concluded by an opinion poll, namely UI/ACNielsen Survey, on "The Local Government System: Citizens Perceptions and Preferences" conducted under the USAID-backed $26 million District That Work (DTW) Project in October 2008. Findings of the survey were announced by William Cartier Senior Technical Advisor DTW Project, at "Provincial Dissemination Workshop" held here at a local hotel on Thursday.
The event was attended by Ghulam Ali Pasha, Additional Chief Secretary Local Government (LG) Department Sindh, Dr Kevin Curnow, Chief of Party DTW Project and Tehseena Rafi of Nielsen Pakistan along with representatives from provincial and local governments, district administrations, research institutes, donor agencies, civil society organisations and media.
"The most important finding of the UI/ACNielsen survey is the overwhelming support for maintaining control of service delivery in local governments this finding contradicts the statements from some provincial authorities that the "general public" wants the local government system to be rolled back," says the survey report.
"This applies to all of the services prioritised by the respondents, whether education, health, water or basic sanitation," it added. According to the poll, which was conducted when all the four provinces are undertaking a substantive review of their LG systems to substantially improve the delivery of services to their people, from the viewpoint of the citizens "there is no prima facie case for taking back control of local affairs to the provinces on the justification that they are more accountable, transparent or responsive".
"In fact, on question of access, they (federal and provincial governments) fare much worse than local governments," it added. It says the survey results clearly indicate that the citizens want to use mechanisms of political representation, elected councils, to interact with their local government mostly through union councillors, and there is no strong support for the idea of increasing bureaucratic control over local affairs, rather the survey shows that the majority of citizens are generally critical of the lack of responsiveness of bureaucrats.
It said citizens were also critical of the involvement of local governments in widespread corruption on district and tehsil levels with some provinces intending to take action against individual nazims. "Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that corruption is systemic, involving both elected officials and civil servants," added the report.
Without improvements in accountability and transparency, widespread corruption in LG would continue unabated and service coverage and quality would not be substantively improved, it said. According to the survey 50 percent of Sindh's population also opine that no level of government, whether federal, provincial or local, was likely to accomplish what it says it would.
The union councils, it says, received the most positive mentions of any level of government on all measures of accountability, access and responsiveness. "By virtue of their (UCs) frequent face-to-face interaction with their community they appear to play a key role in representing citizens' concerns and resolving specific problems with higher levels of government," says the poll.
About confusion on roles of the federal, provincial and city governments the survey says: "The federal government continues to operate "vertical" programs in education and health which overrides both districts and provinces and cause problems of accountability. One example is the People's Primary Health Initiative (PPHI), which completely sidelines district health decision-makers and has caused deterioration in preventive health programs even while it has tended to improve access to curative services".
Earlier, Dr Kevin Curnow, Chief of Party DTW Project delivered his introductory speech followed by Tehseena Rafi of Nielsen Pakistan who elaborated upon the type of methodology used in conducting the survey.
Ghulam Ali Pasha, Additional Chief Secretary Local Government Department Sindh in his address terming the survey report a fair version of public opinion stressed the need to undertake multifaceted reforms. Terming some aspects of the report, like responsiveness of the government officials, as "apathetic", he said there was a strong need to address lots of issues pertaining to governance, transparency and accountability. He said findings of the survey would really help the present government improve/reform the entire system of governance.