The failure of economically rich countries for hampering climate warming due to uncontrollable carbon emissions at their end has brought immense adverse impacts on the climatic environment of developing countries of South Asia in particular. Increasing temperatures this summer caused fast glaciers melting and harsh monsoons onslaught has caused heavy rainfalls in countries like Pakistan and India.
Pakistan in particular apart from experiencing long drought spells is now engulfed in heavy monsoon rain spells from June to till mid of September this year. It has played havoc in the devastation of not only civic life but also the economy of the country as a whole. What to speak of rural areas even big cities in all four provinces, even dwellers of posh areas suffered miserably due to flooded roads, and break down of electricity and telephone services for long hours. In fact delivery of civic amenities and public services has always been a neglected issue at all levels of the government.
Almost all the service-providing agencies relating to electricity, water, telecommunication, sanitation, roads and all transport services enjoy the status of bureaucratic monopolies and are devoid of concern for improving the civic life of the country. As such it is imperative that civic groups/citizens groups and NGOs take an initiative collectively to find a way to make service-providing agencies accountable to the general public. For this various citizens, groups/NGOs themselves through country-wide consensus need to develop a mechanism to monitor and evaluate the performance of service providers on regular basis.
No doubt, in the past various proposals had come forth from various quarters through the press and other public platforms prompting the government to monitor and supervise the delivery of social services and other civic amenities through the formation of committees/task forces having representation from service providing agencies, union councils and general public preferably senior citizens of repute belonging to each union council to function as watchdogs, but unfortunately, local governments of all the provinces continue to be inactive due to delaying tactics in holding local bodies elections and above all callous attitude of the establishment at this count nothing concrete has come forward to initiate the process of effective monitoring and evaluation of the performance of service providing agency.
India has also been facing a similar deplorable situation with regard to the supply of various utility and other public services. In the early nineties when the Metropolitan city of Bengaluru was coming up as an IT hub and its development process was being hampered due to intermittent breakdowns and poor maintenance of electricity, telephone services, water supply and other civic amenities and above all rampant corruption in all public service agencies, hence voluntary efforts were made by different NGOs and civic groups of Bengaluru to assess and evaluate the performance of these agencies through various survey studies and made the results known to the general public as well as concerned utility service providers.
Meanwhile a sociologist – Dr Samuel Paul in collaboration with a civic group of Bengaluru, which was registered as an NGO called Public Affairs Centre (PAC) evolved a monitoring and evaluation system for all public services and introduced ‘Citizens Report Cards to monitor, evaluate and ultimately for exerting pressure on service providers to improve the delivery of services.
Based on the principle that it is a user of the public service who knows best whether services are being delivered efficiently or not, citizen’s report cards have been introduced with the purpose of quantifying information from various segments of the population (categorised on the basis of their financial status) through their response to following questions:
- How satisfactory are the public services?
- Which aspects of the service are satisfactory and what are the points of dissatisfaction?
- What are the direct and indirect costs of acquiring these services?
This program launched by PAC is being funded by the Foundation of India, a voluntary organisation and the Ford Foundation. Voluntary financial support had come from their corporate and industrial sectors. In this regard, no financial support was sought from the Government of India.
For evaluating the performance of all public service agencies, a pre-tested questionnaire was introduced to acquire a public response, not only on delivery of service but also factors adding to indirect cost falling on the user of the service like callous behaviour of the staff, their delaying tactics to deal with clients complaint and redress the issue. A seven-point rating scale (7 for highly satisfied and 1 for least satisfied) enabled the quantification of responses. The data thus collected was analysed through the use of computer software and the end product gave a ranking/scoring of each public service based on public opinion. These ratings/scorings were subsequently discussed with senior officers of the concerned agency and then publicised among the general public through electronic and print media. The findings of the survey were disseminated among civic groups, public representatives and NGOs through holding seminars and public meetings etc.
In order to find the effectiveness of this initiative various surveys were conducted until the year 1999-2000 when things had improved a lot, particularly in areas of medical and telephone services. Bill collection services were also streamlined. Another positive impact of this exercise was that the Chief Minister of Karnataka formed the Bengaluru Agenda Task Force (BATF). This group brought together prominent city residents for the purpose of improving the quality of service and infrastructure. A system for self-assessment of property tax was put in place. Above all the report card survey facilitated accountability of public agencies through the quantification of feedback from the public particularly on elements of corruption within these organisations.
A similar exercise can be undertaken in all metropolitan cities of Pakistan, where all segments of the population continue to suffer due to increasing inefficiency, corruption and mismanagement in all civic agencies. Karachi Electric Supply and PTCL have no doubt been sold to foreign buyers, but their monopolistic position and continuation of old corporate culture in these entities have further deteriorated the standard of delivery of the service. Power outages are common and frequent and unannounced load shedding from the very start of the current summer season coupled with heavy rains and furious flood situation in all rural areas has brought immense miseries for the general public and financial loss not only to the agriculture sector but also to all businesses and manufacturing concerns. In fact, citizens themselves need to voluntarily offer to monitor and supervise the delivery of service.
There is an urgent need to initiate a well-organised mechanism for making public service providers accountable to the general public. To begin with, India’s Citizen’s card system can be replicated in all big cities to start with, with some modifications. Local bodies elections should be held on priority and then civic groups and NGOs in collaboration with representatives from each Union council and CBO/NGO of the area in each township, where one official representative from each Union Council be also included so as to put pressure on local government to improve performance with regard to water supply, proper maintenance of roads and sewerage system, which are its area of responsibility.
In fact introduction of the local government system in Pakistan with 33%, women representation was meant for making each development program people-centred and gender-sensitive as the active participation of citizens in local decision-making and development planning is essential for meeting the service needs of a locality effectively, but unfortunately conflicting, ambiguous and imprecise legal framework and patronised politics of local bodies system was found barring access of voice of local citizens to those who are endowed with the responsibility of policy/decision making at local government level in the past (till local body system was active).
‘Second generation reforms’ as envisaged through the Washington Consensus, which Pakistan was required to undertake on a priority basis also focus on the delivery of public services in order to improve the quality of life in the country. Accordingly in order to compel all public service-providing agencies to streamline their systems so as to ensure effective delivery of service to all segments of the population citizens’ committees as proposed above be formed with the suggested pattern of membership and Report Card system as experimented by the Bengaluru state of India and visualised by Dr Samuel Paul in his book ‘Holding the state to account’ be introduced.
For ensuring the effective working of proposed committees, their membership from the general public must be comprised of retired educationists and well-reputed bureaucrats without any gender discrimination.
The proposed mechanism of monitoring and evaluation of public services is not likely to encounter any financial constraints. It is expected that for funding this project corporate sector, multinational corporations and private individuals would gladly come forward. Financial support can be sought from Asian Development Bank and other relevant funding agencies also.
At the initial stage success of this exercise may not appear very promising, but its application on a continuous basis with an interval of 5years will have far reaching repercussions regarding strengthening citizens’ voices and developing concern among public service agencies for their accountability to citizens of the country, which is the very essence of all initiatives required for socio-economic development of a country.