'Empowerment stunted due to faulty administration'

Lakshmi DE SILVA

The empowerment of the people at the lowest level in our countries that achieved independence from the British in 1948 had been constrained due to the system of administration and legislators who were a transient elite planning and implementing everything from the centre with no opportunity provided to the people at the grassroots level to run their own lives.

This was particularly clear from the way the British kept economic growth at one percent or less during their rule but our own governments were able to achieve a higher economic growth rate and run our local government institutions with more power for the people, former Indian Minister and expert on local government Mani Shanker Iyer said yesterday. He was delivering the keynote address at the National Symposium on Local Government at the BMICH, Colombo.

Iyer said sometimes over eighty-five percent of funds allocated for rural development was spent on the overheads of the bureaucracy and other expenses while only fifteen percent reached the people. However for local government to be effective it should be guaranteed by the provisions of the constitution.

In India there were 250,000 elected local bodies with 3.2 million elected representatives of which 1.2 million were women, a dramatic revolution in local government, he noted.

Local Government and Provincial Councils Minister Janaka Bandara Tennekoon said the people at the grassroots level had to be respected by the local government representatives and their problems sorted out without discrimination on ethnic, religious, caste or other narrow prejudices.

The country could be developed only if the elected representatives listened to the grievances of the people.

My father was humble printer who brought people's views and news from the town to the village. He was simply dressed in the national dress and was first elected to the local body and then to the Parliament where he became a Minister. But it was his example of serving the people that I still have as my strength, the pro-people thinking that we should serve the people from birth to death, he said.

Chief Government Whip and Urban Development and Sacred Area Development Minister Dinesh Gunawardena said that a new Bill has been brought before Parliament to strengthen local bodies to give the elected representatives more power and responsibility for developing their localities.

The collection of revenues by local bodies should be modernised by introducing Information Technology so that the income of the local bodies could be increased, he said.

In Singapore a research done on urbanization in South Asia recently showed that migration from villages to urban areas was the lowest among the South Asian Countries.

This was due to strengthening the villages and bringing development to the village as enunciated in the Mahinda Chintana policy of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had brought a reawakening to the rural sector, the minister noted.