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Social services fail the poor in many countries
Training labour skills in South-Eastern Europe
06/2005 |
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[ Poverty alleviation ]
Donors and the triangle of accountability
Social services are failing poor people in too many developing countries. In order to improve the situation, providers and governments must be made accountable. Donors should promote this process by various means.
[ By Hans Dembowski ]
Joseph Chimombo has a clear sense of mission: “Our collective aim is to make the government accountable.” Chimombo is the director of the University of Malawi’s Centre for Educational Research and Training. He also serves as the coordinator of 54 faith- and community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have joined forces because the quality of primary education dropped dramatically after Malawi stopped charging school fees in 1994. Today, the NGOs are regularly debating their concerns with government agencies as well as with teachers, parents and donor organisations. “Not everything is rosy,” Chimombo admits, “but at least teacher training has improved.” The grassroots organisations, he says, have a clearer understanding of what poor people need than government agencies.
Such NGO activism helps to improve social services in developing countries – and to make them work better for the poor. Rowland Roome of the Aga Khan Foundation agrees that mobilising communities enhances their bargaining power. That, in turn, tends to enhance the quality of the services they get.
In World Bank jargon, social services are embedded in a “Triangle of Accountability”. In principle, providers are responsible to their clients and to the governments that regulate and often also fund them. In turn, voters can hold governments to account in democratic politics. Wherever public services work well, the people have a double check on service provision: They are the clients who control the quality of what is delivered over a short route to the provision agencies. And they are the citizens who monitor and sanction their government’s performance and its impact on service provision over a long route. This scheme was elaborated on in the World Development Report (WDR) 2004 “Making Services Work for Poor People”.
The sad truth, however, is that such accountability triangles are not efficiently operational in many poor countries. Services often fail poor people. Neither governments nor providers react to marginalised people’s needs – and all too often governments have little control of what the providers are actually doing. According to François Bourguignon, the Bank’s Chief Economist, the main question is therefore “how to ensure that governments fund programmes that work and correspond to the needs of the people.” To do so, accountability would have to be strengthened on all sides of the triangle.
Experts from poor countries, however, raise another question: “How do donors fit in the triangle?” At a conference on social service delivery hosted by InWEnt, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the World Bank Institute in Bonn in May, Amos Odea Mwakilasa of the Tanzanian Health Ministry said it was urgent to tackle this issue. His aim, however, was not to discuss the World Bank’s correct standard reply of donor governments being responsible to their legislators and their electorates. For the African health official, the decisive issue is how donors relate to poor countries and what impact their programmes have on accountability there.
Tackling additional tasks
In Mwakilasa’s view, capacity building is helpful. His government, for instance, has been working on codes of conduct and ethics etiquettes for officials – with the support of InWEnt. This approach goes beyond mere skill training. Client charters, gender advocacy and raising awareness for human rights are also means Mwakilasa considers meaningful to empower poor people. The Tanzanian official, however, admits that health administrations in poor countries often find it difficult to motivate their personnel. Heavy workloads, meagre salaries and a sense of futility in the face of disasters such as the African HIV/Aids-crisis undermine the morale of doctors and nurses. For them, migration to rich countries becomes attractive.
As salaries are of particular importance in this context, experts from poor countries suggest that donor governments should be more generous in terms of paying teachers and health professionals. Michael Hofmann, director general of the German Development Ministry, agrees: “Building schools and hospitals is not enough, we must get involved in recurring costs.” In general, Hofmann says, German agencies have been successful at establishing individual model cases at the local level. But that, in his view, is not all that is required and the goal should now be to “translate good pilot projects into standards”.
Donors have been learning their lessons, adds Floris Blankenberg of the Netherlands’ Foreign Office. He lists as “signs of hope” that donors are working on harmonisation of their efforts, better aligning them to the standards and procedures prevalent in recipient countries, and emphasising the importance of owner-driven poverty reduction strategies.
Nonetheless, Zafrullah Chowdhury, an NGO leader from Bangladesh, wants donors to become more transparent. He is convinced that they can – and should – do better. Chowdhury makes three proposals: donors should make sure that the programmes they fund are discussed in the parliaments of recipient countries, donors should cooperate more closely with local administrations, and they should publish the amounts of their aid transfers. Bangladesh’s Parliament, Chowdhury reports, does not officially discuss budget items that are internationally funded and, accordingly, the public has little knowledge of donor activities. In order to enhance accountability, donors should therefore make aid conditional on parliamentary debate.
Decentralised decision-making would also enhance accountability, according to Chowdhury. The project coordinator of the NGO Gonoshastaya Kendra points out that primary school teachers in Bangladesh are appointed by the Central Government. Their salary is low and they normally have paid a bribe to be recruited. As a result, absenteism is rampant. Religious leaders, however, tend to be available to their communities all the time, even though they are paid even less than teachers. Religious leaders, however, are appointed locally and are directly involved with their constituency.
Finally, Chowdhury argues for more publicity on donor spending. If the people concerned – whether at the central or the local level – know what sums are coming in from abroad, they are in a position to check what is done with the money. The NGO activist emphasises that civil society organisations are not immune to the temptation of diverting money and that, accordingly, transfers made to them should also be publicised.
Cooperating with NGOs rather than governments is one means by which donors try to enhance the bargaining power of deprived people. After all, no powerful institution should be expected to voluntarily make itself accountable to interest groups that, so far, have had little leverage. However, by-passing donor governments in this way does not solve all problems. “Without the government and lacking political will, we can’t do much,” says Andreas Proksch of GTZ. In this context, Bernd Schleich, managing director of InWEnt, sees a tripple role for the company he leads: skill training at various institutional levels, creating an international network of experts and engaging governments in policy dialogue. All three tasks can contribute to institution building and spreading information.
No doubt, information matters. Health and education practitioners from many poor countries, however, complain that reliable data are not readily available. To some extent, they blame the media. Sensationalist reporters, for instance, show little interest in supposedly dry budget issues as long as they do not sense an imminent scandal. Moreover, the coverage of academic and scientific affairs also tends to be inadequate. What the media report is therefore not necessarily a sufficient basis for making informed choices concerning one’s health or the educational future of one’s children. For obvious reasons, poor – and particularly illitarate – people hardly have any access to such vital information. In an ironic twist, Ntshabele Josiah Manamela of the Finance Ministry in Botswana, points out that better education is a key issue for empowering poor people – an empowerment, that is yet to ensure that their children are adequately educated.
And even if the poor were informed on options, rights and entitlements, they often have little means of enforcing them. This is even so for people of democratically run countries, for instance, if they live in remote, rural areas. More often than not, state institutions remain weak in such regions – and the nearest law court may well be beyond a person’s physical and social reach. For such reasons, improving services is linked to enhancing governance in general.
Chief economist Bourguignon therefore has good reason to emphasise the World Bank’s two pillar strategy of development. It is geared towards enhancing people’s rights as well as towards improving the investment climate in an attempt to boost productivity and GDP.
Dr. Hans Dembowski
Editor in Chief of D+C Development and Cooperation/
E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit. euz.editor@fsd.de
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