Local government system fails to deliver in NWFP, Pakistan

Staff Report

PESHAWAR: Majority of people in the NWFP is not satisfied with services provided by local governments, reveals findings of a survey.

Nielsen Pakistan and Urban Institute conducted the survey on ‘Citizens’ Perceptions and Preferences on the Local Government System’. The USAID-funded Pakistan’s Districts that Work (DTW) sponsored the survey whose findings were revealed during a workshop here on Tuesday.

The survey touched on the local government’s service delivery system in the NWFP.

The survey findings said quality and coverage of services in rural areas was worse than urban areas possibly because of the malfunctioning of the provincial, district and tehsil departments.

The survey’s results come at a time when the federal government, backed by provinces, is considering reforming the LG system introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf in 2001.

The survey said majority of the respondents believed local governments could be more effective if they’re held accountable for their acts.

On question of primary drinking water source in rural areas, 43 percent respondents said they’re using water provided by other than the local government, while 22 percent said they were using ‘unimproved’ water. Only 36 percent Frontier population has connection to government-supplied water.

In rural areas, garbage collection from houses by the local governments stood at zero percent and it’s 15 percent in urban areas, according to the survey. Around 51 percent rural and 23 percent urban population disposed of garbage in the open, it said.

The survey also found the population had ‘no strong sense’ that civil servants were responsive. “Forty percent respondents said (they) don’t know.” Only eight percent to 13 percent population considered that the provincial, district or tehsil administration had an ‘open door’ policy, which will allow them access to the government officials.

According to the survey findings, just 21 percent respondents said the federal and provincial governments were responsive, while 42 percent said the district, tehsil and union councils were responsive, while 20 percent said ‘none’ and 16 percent said ‘don’t know’.

Fifty-five percent respondents either said none or don’t know which level of government tried to know citizens’ opinion by the federal, provincial, district, tehsil or union councils before taking policy decisions.

Similarly, 54 percent respondents either said ‘none’ or ‘don’t know’ when asked which level of government could easily be accessed. Eight percent population said they’d access to the federal government, seven percent to the provincial government and eight percent to the district government.

Ease of doing business

Pakistan falls to 77th position (The NEWS)
By Mansoor Ahmad

LAHORE: Pakistan has been relegated from 74th to 77th rank in ‘ease of doing business’ by the World Bank and needs to introduce wide-ranging reforms in enforcement of contracts, employment of workers and payment of taxes in order to improve its ranking.

The World Bank report on Doing Business has rated Singapore as the best place in ‘ease of doing business’. Malaysia, ranked 20th, is the top Muslim country in the index which evaluated 181 economies, improving its ranking from 25th position in 2008. Pakistan which was ranked 74th in 2008 is placed at 77th place for 2009.

The World Bank has evaluated these rankings on the basis of official procedures and data gathered from member countries. It does not, for example, examine security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, labour skills of the population, underlying strength of institutions and quality of infrastructure.

Global survey reveals growing anger over social inequality

By Bill Van Auken
20 May 2008

The unprecedented accumulation of wealth by a narrow financial elite under conditions of declining real incomes for the vast majority of the world’s population is creating mounting discontent and anger.

This is the significance of a poll conducted across Europe, Asia and the United States by the Financial Times of London and the Harris polling firm.

“Income inequality has emerged as a highly contentious political issue in many countries as the latest wave of globalization has created a ‘superclass’ of rich people,” the Financial Times commented in relation to the poll results, which were published Monday.

The FT/Harris poll found overwhelming majorities throughout Europe expressing the view that the social chasm between the financial elite and the rest of the population has grown too large. In Spain, for example, 76 percent said that social inequality had grown too great, while in Germany the figure was 87 percent.

In China, which has become the low-wage manufacturing center of the world, subjecting millions of workers to exploitation while producing a new class of billionaires and multi-millionaires, 80 percent said that inequality in income was too great.

Pakistan: new research on education in the Punjab Province

Source

Lahore, April 17, 2008 – A new report released today by the World Bank calls for a reevaluation of education policies in the context of a dramatic increase in private schools for primary education in Pakistan. The report presents facts and findings from a survey of all public and private primary schools in 112 villages in Pakistan’s Punjab province, and lays out important policy options based on detailed data to facilitate evidence-based policymaking.

The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS), the result of collaboration between the World Bank and researchers from Harvard University and Pomona College, says for-profit private schools have become a widespread presence in both urban and rural areas, providing parents another option for investing in their children’s education. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of private schools increased from 32,000 to 47,000, and by the end of 2005, one-third of enrolled children at the primary level was studying in a private school.

The report says a large fraction of rural Pakistani households no longer lives in a village with one or two government schools. Half the population of rural Punjab lives in villages where parents can choose from 7 or 8 schools.

While overall enrollments increased by 10 percent between 2001 and 2005, the report says quality of education is lagging and children perform significantly below curricular standards for common subjects and concepts at their grade-level. Children in private schools score significantly higher than those in government schools, even when they are from the same village. In fact, it will take children in government schools 1.5 – 2.5 years of additional schooling to catch up to where private school children are in Class 3. Better learning results in private schools do not arise from higher costs — it costs half as much to educate a child in a private school (Rs.1000 per year) compared to a government school (Rs.2000 per year).

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