N’ganj City Corporation
Economic dev, not service delivery, underscored
Experts have suggested that a master plan should be formulated for the Narayanganj City Corporation to shift its focus on service delivery to economic development.
In a report, the urban experts have observed that the city corporation should focus more on the city’s economic development instead of providing limited services to improve its services.
The Institute of Governance Studies, BRAC University recently released the report tiled ‘State of Cities: Re-thinking urban governance in Narayanganj’.
Dhaka University public administration professor Ferdous Jahan, who is also the lead researcher of the report, has said this year, the second State of Cities report makes an effort to understand the ‘urban governance in Narayanganj city’.
They have conducted the survey among 804 households of the city regarding urban services in both slums and non-slum areas to understand the existing practice of service delivery and the governance system.
He says the city corporation which was declared in 2011 is yet to utilise its full potential in urban governance and its governing process is focused on delivering services without addressing larger economic issues at the city level.
The city has failed in levying targeted revenue from its own sources which has necessitated its reliance on government grants and project aid, he thinks.
The researchers have witnessed the presence of limited governance constrained by powerful bureaucracy, weak economic base and uncommitted central government.
The report’s chapter titled ‘City Government: contextualising the concept in Narayanganj’ says that the existing definition of urban government is inadequate in explaining the situation of the developing countries and to deal with that.
It says what people are witnessing in Narayanganj is the development of a limited governance where the major roles of the city government has been limited to service delivery as the city has no power or authority in dealing with the economic development plan.
The city corporation can play an important role to enhance the economic development of the area and this role of the city corporation should be taken into consideration by the central government, it observes.
In the chapter ‘Fiscal Strength of City Building’ it is said that fiscal strength of the city corporation has become unsuccessful in levying the targeted revenue from its own sources, therefore it needs to rely more on government grant and foreign aid.
As a result, members of the city corporation could not materialise all of their commitments to the citizens, the report says.
The reliance on the central government curbs the authority of the city corporation and it is forced to limit its role and concentrate only on service delivery.
IGS executive director Sultan Hafeez Rahman has said that the quality of life in the urban areas is already amongst the poorest in the world.
He thanks that the pressure on power, water, gas and sanitation is severe and the garbage disposal system has virtually failed.
The consequence of unplanned urban growth and regulatory failure also poses serious hazards to the environment while poor water and air quality undermined the sustainability of the cities, Hafeez Rahman says.
The first State of Cities report, published in 2012, was based on Dhaka city.
-With New Age input
