Community planning important for uplifting rural livelihood
BSS
RAJSHAHI: Speakers at a discussion stressed the need for promoting and adopting mass-participatory community planning in local government institutions for the sake of improving living and livelihood condition of grassroots people, reports BSS. They viewed mass-participatory planning and proper implementation of those could be the effective means of meeting up various local needs like safe drinking water, sanitation and development of community clinics.
The observations came at a daylong Participatory mass-planning workshop held in the conference hall of Gogram Union Parishad under Godagari upazila of the district yesterday.
Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK), a rights-based organisation, arranged the workshop in association with its Effective Participation for Transparent and Accountable Local Government Project.
With UP Secretary Mazharul Islam in the chair, President of Godagari Uppazila Press Club Alamgir Kabir, BARCIK Regional Coordinator Jahid Ali, Field Facilitator Enamul Haque and UP Members Saleha Begum, Azizul Islam, Solaiman Kabir and journalist Saiful Islam spoke on the occasion.
The meeting discussed some key issues including enhancing capacity for women leadership roles in local government institution structures, mobilising citizens groups to influence their service delivery, mainstreaming pro-poor and pro-women local governance practices and ensuring collaboration and interaction.
The participants stressed on providing training on tax assessment and collection, financial management and record keeping, participatory planning and budgeting, roles and responsibilities of union parshads and upazila parishads and standing committees and creating strategic planning. They said all the existing services being delivered towards the grassroots people need to be more coordinated and accelerated.
