Decentralisation of municipal wards stressed
for good urban governance

Experts have emphasised the need for decentralisation of the system and dissemination of the power of governance in municipal wards for good urban governance.

They said the municipal areas must slowly free themselves from the centralised system and spread their municipal activities at liberty. The urban authorities should have the freedom to recruit manpower, make development decisions and implement them, and have their own finance and means of generating finance.

The municipalities must enjoy full authority to offer security and services to the citizens.

Town Planners, architects, engineers, students and members of the civil society working for a better urban governance expressed their opinions at a working session of the three-day Election 2001: National Policy Forum in the city yesterday. The Forum, organised jointly by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, began on Tuesday.

Presenting a CPD Task Force policy brief on Urban Governance, NI Nazem of Jahangirnagar University said although the growth of cities has decreased compared to the period between 1971 and 1981, due to the centralised system, the cities have become environmentally unbalanced.

Deteriorating law and order, inadequate transportation, lack of civic amenities, traffic jams, inadequate healthcare and education facilities, accommodation problem, and polluted air and water have all reached an alarming level.

Moreover, the general trend to grab open spaces, canals, rivers, public parks, mountains and forests has increased manifold, the Task Force report said.

Prof Nazrul Islam of the Centre for Urban Studies, who Chaired the working session, said on previous occasions recommendations of the Task Force were hardly taken into account by the government. He said it seemed that the efforts were completely detached from the government's concern.

Architect Khadem Ali, a participant who commented on the report, said the policymakers and public representatives should be present at similar discussions where policy matters are ventilated by experts.

Muneera Khatun of Rajuk said in the national level there are separate sectors for planning and infrastructure, but there is no proper planning about which region would need how much funds. It is very difficult to obtain proper maps of urban areas, she said.

"There are aerial photographs of the cities but planners and common people of the cities do not have access to them, and this gives rise to many disputes," she said.

The participants unanimously agreed that for better governance in the country's urban areas the Mayor should be elected for four years instead of five.

Another participant, Nurunnahar Milli, said the decentralisation process of the urban system should take into account both economic and financial aspects.

Morshed Ali, a leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh who is running in the upcoming parliamentary election from Dhaka-11 constituency, said the government should revive the system of house building loans in the rural and urban areas.

Dr Mohammad Ghulam Murtaza, Associate Professor at Khulna University, said all NGOs in urban areas must be accountable to the authorities. The city corporations are not recruiting expert manpower that the universities are producing despite vacancies. There must be a municipal process policy, he said.

Kazi Golam Hafiz, Chief Town Planner of Rajuk, said there are lots of "abuses" in city developments. Despite sincere efforts to build new roads in the city, Rajuk is unable to implement the projects due to severe shortage of funds, he added.

Other participants said one of the reasons behind the lack of coordination between Rajuk and the DCC is because the Mayor enjoys the status of a full Minister while the Rajuk Chairman has the status of an Additional Secretary. They said the DCC does not pay heed to Rajuk because it feels it is superior.

Kazi Fazlur Rahman, former Advisor to Caretaker Government of 1991, who was Special Guest at the session, said if there is no improvement in city governance, even good work would prove meaningless. "We have noticed that for the last 50 years there is a trend of centralising the system, we must stop it immediately," he said.