A great change in the practices of Chalishia Union Parishad has taken place. Unlike past years, the Union Parishad now embraces transparency in its services: Its officials have become more accountable and all of the UP works are being done systematically.
According to the Community Organisers working there, the change has come about after the Union Parishad has entered into an agreement with HYSAWA Fund.
Each year, all Union Parishads of the country are provided with money and resources under the government’s Social Safety Net programmes. Although the core objective of these programmes is to support vulnerable groups of people, it happened many times that the right people did not get benefits from it. Chalishia was among such Union Parishads where many vulnerable and marginalized people had been left out of the government schemes due to selection error. In the absence of any proper method that could have helped determine financial condition of locals, the Union Parishad had to make decisions based on speculations, which sometimes served the interests of relatively richer section of population.
However, the UP managed to put this past behind itself after a baseline survey to segregate the poor from the wealthy was carried out under HYSAWA-SDC Project. This initiative has helped the UP to make informed decision, and as a result, money from other government projects has also ended up in the right hands.
Furthermore, the HYSAWA-SDC Project has encouraged the UP to improve transparency, which is regarded as a central pillar of Good Governance.
“During the inception period of the project, some UP members preferred not to attend monthly meetings, yet they were shown present on paper. They used to say that the reason for their absence was they were not paid for their attendance,” Mahmuda Akhtar Runa, a Community Organiser of the UP under Ovoynagar Upazila of Jessore, said. But soon they realised that their absence would not go unnoticed and HYSAWA authorities would hold them to account for that. Besides, they understood that if they get involved with development activities through these meetings, they would be more popular among the people, which contributed to regularising their attendance.
Chairman MM Abdul Latif admitted that the change was happening in Chalishia Union Parishad. “The UP officials are now sufficiently transparent and accountable. And we can’t deny that this transparency is brought about due to our involvement in the HYSAWA-SDC Project.”
Case study collected by Syed Muhammad Shoeb, Documentation Officer, HYSAWA, November 2014