Children and governance
The intention of the Decentralisation by Devolution (DbyD) policy is to
- bring services closer to people,
- better define the relationship between local and central government and
- enable citizens to hold public officials to account.
This provides opportunities for co-ordinated action that is locally relevant and that brings cross sectoral partners together.
The Opportunities and Obstacles (O&OD) process enables communities to identify and implement their local development and should be taken advantage of more strategically by Local Government Authorities.
But despite the stated policy intentions mixed messages persist about decentralisation on the ground.
Whilst, resources need to be devolved to Local Government Authorities and communities need to see their plans funded in practice LGA’s have only a limited degree financial autonomy.
Many local revenue sources, especially business licenses, were abolished in 2004.
Urban councils are increasingly dependent on central government grants. “There has not been any movement in transferring more budgetary resources to LGA’s in 2008/9 budget. Should this trend persist in the next two years it will compromise the government objective of transferring 25 percent of budgetary resources to LGAs” (PER Macro Group, October 2008, p. 22).
Rather than being driven primarily by local priorities and choices, local expenditure reflects national sector priorities and is driven to a large extent by the nature of the intergovernmental fiscal transfer system. This limits the spending discretion of local government authorities.
Local participatory processes are redundant if local capital development priorities are ultimately shaped by the instructions of the central government’s leadership rather than by community needs.
