Governance Advocacy Forum Holds 5 Regional Dialogues on Local Government Reforms

The Governance Advocacy Forum, with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Bangladesh and in collaboration with UNDP, has organized five divisional dialogues to identify institutional weaknesses, excessive centralization of power, financial constraints, lack of transparency and accountability, corruption, political interference, and limited opportunities for gender and social inclusion as challenges in Bangladesh’s local government system, and to propose reforms and gather opinions from relevant stakeholders. These dialogues titled ‘Local Government Reform in Light of Democratic Decentralization and Public Aspirations’ were held in Khulna (January 29), Barisal (February 2), Rajshahi (February 5), Sylhet (February 10), and Chattogram (February 13) respectively.  

With the aim of structural change in local government system, these dialogues focused on six reform proposals: decentralization of power and division of responsibilities at the local level, changes in the electoral system, localization of the tax-revenue system, ensuring transparency and accountability, public participation at all levels of local development and inclusion of grassroots people, and increasing institutional capacity. Approximately 20 recommendations were put forth by Governance Advocacy Forum during these dialogues for participants’ feedback. 

Participants of the dialogues expressed agreement with most of the forum’s reform proposals and highlighted several important recommendations, including: bringing each government service department under local government; eliminating control of MPs and bureaucratic interference in local government; bringing district administration office under district council; allocating resources to local government institutions considering regional characteristics ; assigning specific tasks to women representatives; direct elections without party symbols; including representatives of youth and marginalized populations in local government activities; eliminating tax disparities; capacity enhancement of elected representatives from the inception; considering educational qualifications of elected representatives; increasing remuneration of elected representatives in light of current market value; increasing personnel in union parishad; including representatives of marginalized communities in various committees, etc. 

The dialogues were moderated by Kaniz Fatema, Deputy Director of WAVE Foundation, with the keynote paper presented by Aniruddha Roy, facilitator of the forum and Assistant Director of WAVE Foundation. Local organizations extended their support for organizing the event as well. Additionally, under direct coordination of Nazrul Islam, Lipi Amena, and Papel Kumar Saha from the forum’s secretariat, the dialogues included current and former local government representatives, women, professionals, media personnel, development workers, social workers, volunteers, youth representatives, student representatives, housewives, leaders of organized NGO groups, teachers, representatives of local clubs, religious leaders, indigenous people, Dalits, transgender community, extremely poor, and other marginalized communities. Among nearly four hundred participants, 77 representatives from disadvantaged groups in society participated in these dialogues, providing their opinions.