Speakers at an advocacy workshop yesterday stressed the need for strengthening local government for strong democracy and its institutionalisation at grassroots level. They suggested for enhancing skills of the local public representatives, including upazila parishad chairmen, vice-chairmen, union parishad chairmen, members and secretaries, to achieve the long cherished goals of empowering grassroots people through strengthening local government bodies.
They said uniform development and justice could be ensured through empowering the Upazila and Union parishad bodies and building their capacities in preparing policies, strategies, work-plans and allocating funds ensuring good governance and accountability.
The Upazila Governance Project (UZGP) and Local Government Division (LGD) of Khulna district jointly arranged workshop in collaboration with European Union (EU), Swiss Agency for Development and Corporation (SDC), UNCDF and UNDP held at the conference room of Khulna Circuit House under Sadar police station in the city.
Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Khulna Md Mostafa Kamal addressed the opening session as chief guest. Deputy Director of LGD Khulna district Md Habibul Haque Khan presided over the function.
National Project coordinator of UZGP, Md Toufique Mohiuddin, Monitoring and Evaluation officer of UZGP Md Mizanur Rahman, Senior Management Consultant of Bangladesh Institute Management (BIM) Md Saidur Rahman, Management Information System (MIS) officer of UZGP Md Mohebur Rahman, District Facilitator of UZGP, Khulna Md Iqbal Hossain, among others, spoke on the occasion.
The discussants put emphasis on empowering and increasing efficiency of the local government institutions, elected public representatives and relaxation of administrative control in the activities of Upazila and Union parishads to give democracy a firm base.
They also recommended for more service-orientation, especially in health, education, agriculture, fisheries, livestock, poverty alleviation and gender development, rather than only physical infrastructure development.
Awareness of local population about their rights, roles and responsibilities and orienting local governance issues to media people and local government institutions need to be focused properly, they opined.
A total of 36 participants including six Upazila Nirbahi Officers (UNOs), seven upazila parishad chairmen, 15 male and female vice-chairmen, district level other officials and local journalists attended the workshop.