Citizen's Charter provides better services

Stanley SENEVIRATNE Kurunegala North group corr.

The basic governing principle of a Citizen's Charter is to create a process for promoting participatory good governance. The formulating and implementation of a Citizen's Charter will help service providers to ensure a better quality services to the citizens, said Secretary to the Kurunegala Pradeshiya sabha I. A. Bandara.

He was addressing participants at a workshop conducted by the Community Development Unit of the Pradeshiya Sabha to educate officials on the theme 'guide to Citizen's Charter for Local Authorities' held at the PS auditorium recently.

Bandara also observed that a Charter of this nature would provide basic framework for co-operate behaviour through re-emphasizing the obligations and responsibilities of service providers as well as the rights and obligations of the citizens as service recipients and all other partners in governance. A Citizen's Charter does not by itself intend to create new legal rights, but it is a method of strengthening and the enforcement of existing legitimate rights and obligatory functions leading to promote natural trust and partnership.

He also said that accordingly, the Citizen's Charter is a written voluntary declaration by both parties concerned, that is the service providers and the citizens. The declaration shall highlight the expected standards of service delivery that they have jointly agreed upon and it would include the availability of choice of services for the people, the mechanism for redressing the grievances and other related information, in other words, it is an expression of mutual understanding between citizens and the service providers on the nature of the services that would be provided and the conditions on which the services could be provided.

The Secretary also pointed out that the declaration is also a method to improve the service delivery mechanism, by addressing the real needs of the people by setting clear standards for the performance of the services. Effective service delivery to the satisfaction of the customers is the main target of the Citizen's Charter which primarily aims at continuous improvement in the level of service delivery by making it a citizen-friendly process.

Speaking on the government decision the secretary pointed out that in a democratic civil society, everyday life of the people heavily depends on the efficiency and effectiveness on the public utility services provided by the Local Government system.

Hence, with the commitment to enhance the responsibleness and accountability of civil services rendered by the Local Government institutions, the Government of Sri Lanka has decided to introduce a Citizen's Charter to the administrative system of Local Government as an effective tool for implementation of participary governance.