People’s involvement can ensure better results out of development efforts

Staff Correspondent

Rights and development activists asked the civil society organisations on Wednesday to engage with the donors and the government for effective utilisation of foreign assistance in development activities.

 Speaking at a consultation meeting they said that no development effort, without the involvement of the common people, could provide the desired results.  They called for involving the people with development efforts, from planning to implementation.
 Two forums, Aid Accountability Group and The Reality of Aid, jointly hosted the national consultation session on ‘engagement of civil society organisations in aid effectiveness’ at the National Press Club.
 Palli Karma Shahayak Foundation chairman Qazi Kholikuzzaman Ahmad said it was time to adopt a plan to make Bangladesh, a self-reliant and welfare state, an election pledge of the Awami League-led alliance government.
 He said that the civil society had a huge responsibility to mobilise and involve the people with the process of development.  Kholikuzzaman said that Bangladesh needed a plan to exit from the aid burden.
 The exit plan, he suggested, should not be difficult for Bangladesh to make only if it could invest the remittance money properly and effectively in productive sectors to create employment. Manju Rani Pramanik, a development activist from Tangail, asked for bringing the extreme poor of the country out of the ‘curse of loan.’  The burden of foreign loan, she said, was slowly killing the poor.
 How a third world country like Bangladesh could protect its political, economic and cultural independence by taking foreign assistance? asked Pias Karim, a BRAC University professor.
 He said that foreign assistance could possibly be better utilised if the civil society organisations were involved in its management. Governance Advocacy Forum coordinator Mohsin Ali called for sorting out the unresolved problems and misunderstandings between the donors and the government for better utilisation of foreign assistance.  He also called for the adoption of a comprehensive and long-term national development policy for better aid utilisation.
 Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, convener of AAG, said that involvement of the civil society organisations would make the government more powerful and accountable, particularly in the managing of assistance.
 Other speakers called for reducing bureaucratic control and involving local government units in overseas funded development projects for better results.

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/aug/26/nat.html