Month: June 2020

Photo credit: WorldFish, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

An endorsement from the local leadership goes a long way in implementing a development intervention. Presenting local elected representatives’ names on promotional materials like event banner is one form of such endorsement. Usually, this is a strategic move meant to foster cooperation between the local leadership and the project implementing organization(s) for smoother operations.

Although this endorsement is a form of acknowledgement, it can become an obligation at times. Especially, when leaders refrain from cooperating with the project activities, or worse, try to halt them when their names are not mentioned. In short, when the token of gratitude is no longer optional.

We saw both types of this endorsement while implementing the Citizen Engagement (CE) component of the Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP). As part of the component, field officers conduct a site meeting where the District or the Upazila engineer (procuring entities) officially inaugurates the work and inform the local citizens to monitor public construction works by providing them necessary details. Local elected representatives, in this case Upazila or UP chairpersons, are invited and encouraged to sensitize the citizens about the necessity of the monitoring work.

While many elected representatives joined the session and encouraged the citizens to do the same, some demanded to see their names printed on the banners. Quite a few of them denied to associate themselves with the project knowing their association would not be formally promoted. In one or two occasions, not printing the local elected leaders’ name almost halted the project activities and these only resumed when the Upazila Nirbahi Officers (UNO) intervened. In another case, we had to re-print the banner with the representative’s name on it.

Procuring entities had different suggestions about it. Some suggested to print the local leader’s name on the banner while some suggested to proceed without doing so.

This prompted us to ask some questions—why is it important to have the local leaders’ names on the banner when they are not involved with the project? Why do some engineers prefer having the leaders’ names on the banners while some others do not?

After all, what is in a name?

In the local political context of Bangladesh, affiliation with a local leader can help mobilize greater number of people. People in rural Bangladesh are very much driven by their local leaders. For a project like ours, part of which seeks to sensitize and train citizens to monitor public procurement works, it is very important for us to bring local people on board. More people we train, better the chances of monitoring.

Also, for citizens who are unaware of the intervention or the implementing organization, it is often more assuring to learn about the whys and the hows of the intervention from the local leaders. Our field officers have reported that chairpersons’ association positively influence the monitoring activities as well.

Other than mobilizing the general population, chairpersons often attend the sessions with locally influential people. Many of them go onto apply the lessons of the training sessions in other construction projects outside the purview of our intervention. This spillover effect of monitoring work is a strong incentive for us to invite local leaders.

Often the demand of having the chairperson’s name on banner comes off as a projection of power and authority. That an organization will host an event/training session or conduct a development intervention in his/her area without consulting them appears to them as ignoring the local political leadership. Some may take this as an offense —an outsider entity working in his/her constituency without their permission. Many equate that as undermining their authority in the area.

While it may look like a mere ego boost, name projection benefits the chairperson as well. The name on the banner shows people that the chairperson is a patron of the development work in the area, if not directly involved with it. This helps him/her to garner popular support, in forms of votes or otherwise. Some take the CE platform as an opportunity to trumpet the success of their political parties and promote themselves.

Additionally, some citizens take it as an opportunity to exercise their power over the project, often with the help of the chairpersons. Anticipating such possibility, Upazila or District engineers, in some cases, advised us not to involve or name the chairperson on promotion materials. Such harmful association not only creates an opportunity for extortion by the local political elites, but also demoralizes local citizens from engaging with the project activities.

Associating local leaders brings some other interesting benefits too. A lot of the times, local hooligans interfere with the project activities with an intention to extract money or to gain undue advantages. In some construction sites, we managed to keep local hooligans away with chairperson’s involvement. Having a local elite on board, who has political power, has helped avoiding such inconveniences in some occasions.

All these mean making a uniform decision about involving the UP chairpersons is a difficult one, although it may look simple at first. These experiences collected from the field and analyzed by the research team contribute in further refining the DIMAPPP CE intervention model.

Erina Mahmud is a Research Associate at BIGD. 

Looking at his betel leaf stained teeth and shabby appearance, no one would take the person seriously. Rather, one would take a furtive glance and wonder why this person is sitting in the front row among many well-dressed government officials. Until he would confidently contest the speaker’s claim.

In front of a number of high level government officials from Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) and Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU), who had just stated that the introduction of electronic procurement would bring a revolutionary change to Bangladesh’s procurement experience, the man stood up and made his point in a casual tone and in colloquial Bangla.

‘I disagree when you claim that e-GP is a way to introduce fairness and competition in the procurement process. Nowadays it has become very difficult to get the work done on time. A very important construction work in our city has been going on which needs to be finished within due time to secure additional funds, but the contractor has been very slow in delivering the work. If it had been assigned to a local contractor, we could have had some control over him and could make him deliver the work on time. However, since he is not local, we can’t do anything about it. Isn’t it wrong that e-GP allowed bidders from other areas to participate? If they are not local, they are not sincere and when they are not around, we can’t really make things move.’

The IMED secretary took the question seriously and responded strongly. He provided many examples of procuring entities facing problems due to their lack of efficiencies regarding contract management. For instance, he referred to the usual delays that take place in the initial phases of a contract, which ultimately delays the entire process and leads to PEs rush towards the end. Soon after he finished, many other participants started discussing both positive and negative sides of the existing procurement system.

Discussions regarding the presence of corruption and political influence in public procurement system has long been a taboo subject. However, in this forum government officials shared that they also fall victim to it. Thanks to this candid discussion, the otherwise formal event transformed into a lively forum where organizers struggled to finish on time.

This is a scene from the Sylhet Divisional Forum, which took place under the Citizen Engagement (CE) sub-component of Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP). CPTU and BRAC Institute of governance and Development (BIGD) jointly host one divisional forum in each division. Although the level of enthusiasm varies, these forums generally provide an unconventional space for interactions among a diverse groups of stakeholders. The forums are designed to ensure participation of administrators and the government officials working in the locality, the local government representatives, bidders, journalists, lawyers, NGO workers, university teachers, and the citizen group members who are currently engaged in the monitoring of the development work under DIMAPPP. A team of government officials who are involved in policy making and regulating procuring activities of the country also fly from Dhaka to join these forums.

The objective of the forum is mainly to inform the local citizens about the government’s citizen engagement initiatives in the local development work. However, with all the stakeholders discussing the problems and prospects of the procurement system, the platform also generates constructive debates and discussions.

The platform is unique in nature. Usually, in traditional government forums, the government officials hesitate to open up themselves in front of the senior officials due to prevalent bureaucratic culture. However, we see a different case in the DIMAPPP forums. The presence of various stakeholders with diverse opinions help them to open up. They really enjoy the participatory group discussions and quite enthusiastically present their own views in front of the forum. Bidders, whose voices usually remain unheard, also dare to speak their mind given the openness of the discussion forum.

Citizens too benefit from this. They read about the irregularities in the development work and observe them, although they barely get an insider view of how procurement policies are made or the projects are managed. The divisional forums gives them a peek inside the system. The lessons they take home from these forums  tend to contribute to citizen’s further engagement to the development process thereby making the  procurement process  more accountable and demand driven. Most importantly, the central level procuring authorities get to about the field level observations from a number of different stakeholders, which, one hopes, will contribute to the procurement reform of the country.

Syeda Salina Aziz is a Program Manager at BIGD.