All district-level govt depts under elected council

All district-level government offices should be placed under elected district councils and elections of all the local-government bodies held under a single schedule, the current reform commission recommends.

Also proposed in a radical reform recipe for the outworn local-government system is the formation of city government in Dhaka and Chattagram city corporations to better manage the two sprawling metropolises.

The Reform Commission on Local Government-one several commissions formed by the current post-uprising government--Sunday submitted its final report containing 51 recommendations that also include allocating one-third of government VAT revenue for local government bodies, reintroducing full court in upazila level, and creation of local-government services.

It has also recommended holding elections of all the five local-government bodies at a time in a staggered manner through unifying the separate basic laws under one comprehensive law.

For an effective district council, it proposes placing all the government departments of a district under the district-council administration.

The present government allocation for local government is only a peanut 0.5 per cent, chairman of the commission Dr Tofael Ahmed told a press briefing after submission of the report to Chief Adviser of the interim government Prof Muhammad Yunus.

"Local-government bodies cannot be effective without sufficient allocation," he said, stressing the need for augmenting the funding for their effective run.

In this regard, the reform commission proposes strengthening the revenue-mobilisation mechanism in the local level and also enhancing central government's funding for them so that many development works can be done by them.

The funds of the government bodies of a district should also be placed under the district council.

"Our local-government bodies do not have the character of a government rather these are based on colonial structure devised to control people," Dr Tofael notes while underscoring need for making these bodies truly democratic and independent in their functions so that they can delivery public services smoothly.

About the merit of staggered voting under one schedule, Dr Tofael mentions that in a single fiscal year 225 days and Tk 2300 crore (Tk 23 billion) were spent for holding local- government elections.

"So we proposed holding these elections under one schedule in staggered manner so that all these elections for union parishads, upazila parishads, municipalities and district councils can be held within a short period and at a cost of around 700 crore."

Responding to a question he said both local-government elections and the national elections are important and it is up to the government and the political parties to decide which one should be held first.

The commission chief, however, feels that no elections will give the desired outcome if basic reforms could not be done prior to that.

The commission proposes creating a public engineering cadre through combing Local Government Engineering Department and Public Health Engineering Department.

The report also carries a proposal for creating wards for holding local elections, saying that each union will be divided into three wards for upazila elections while each upazila will have three wards for district-council elections.

It also recommends establishment of court in upazila level under a senior assistant judge to dispose of civil and criminal cases.

The reform panel proposes fulfilling all the vacant posts in union and upazila health offices.

A combined budget for all the local-government bodies can be formulated and the budget needs to be doubled for the subsequent fiscal, the commission report reads.

To underpin its suggestion for placing all the 30 government departments under the district councils, the commission says this system is already functioning in the hill districts and "we propose to do the same in all the districts".

Responding to a question the commission chief said the setting up of full court in upazila level is not unconstitutional.

mirmostafiz@yahoo.com