About 60% people living in city corporation and municipality areas are dissatisfied with the services provided by the civic authorities, claims a study conducted by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
Citizens in the low category municipalities are more dissatisfied than those living in top municipalities, the think tank said on Saturday.
After conducting a survey on 110 citizens in nine municipalities and two city corporations, the CPD found that 60% respondents were dissatisfied with the services of their respective municipalities while 65% in city corporations.
The new municipalities are considered as B and C category ones, and the old ones categorised as A grade.
The findings were revealed at a dialogue on local government financing in the capital’s Brac Centre Inn, jointly organised by the CPD and Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), an organisation based in Bergen, Norway. The CMI works in the field of research on development and justice.
Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow of the CPD who led the survey, said the new municipalities declared mostly on political grounds were facing financial crisis and troubles in providing the services.
The respondents said poor people, professionals and businessmen were not benefited with the formation of many new municipalities except for the landowners.
He also said it was unfortunate that development of the local government under the incumbent government had not been up to the people’s expectation.
Debapriya mentioned that the elected representatives of the local government bodies were delivering more services than the unelected administrators.
HT Imam, public administration adviser to the prime minister, addressed the function as chief guest while CPD Trustee Board Member M Saiduzzaman presided over the programme.
Since 1972, many changes have been made to the laws related to local government bodies, but those moves were sporadic, said HT Imam.
Prof Amirul Islam Chowdhury, former vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University, said the new municipalities were facing tremendous financial crisis.
“Without fiscal decentralisation, control of the central government must come up,” he said adding that the mayors hardly exercised whatever autonomy they had.
He suggested that the local government bodies should concentrate on collecting more revenue rather than depending on the government allocation.
According to the study findings, with the increase of population, level of dissatisfaction among the citizens increases as the institutional capacity is not improved at the same time.
It identified poor quality services and politicisation in the municipalities’ activities as the key reasons behind public dissatisfaction.
CPD Executive Director Prof Mustafizur Rahman, Executive Director of Democracy Watch Taleya Rahman and Mayor of Habiganj municipality Prof Tofazzel Islam Chowdhury also spoke.
