Opinions

SOMALILAND: decentralization and local government management

July 24, 2012   ·   327145 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2Fsomaliland-decentralization-local-government-management-32714SOMALILAND%3A+decentralization+and+local+government+management2012-07-25+01%3A09%3A03goth+Mohamedhttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2F%3Fp%3D32714

This section of local government management is more concerned decentralization and public service delivery system of Somaliland according to the international decentralization management of local governments

Before we go down let us elaborate on describe the concept of decentralization in correlated public service delivery for the community because some of the people may be reflect the mean of terms decentralization as normal mean but in this context it has wide explanation in terms of government institution.

Decentralization involves the shifting of fiscal, political and administrative responsibilities from higher to lower levels of government. Throughout the world, countries have been enthusiastically embracing different aspects of decentralization, particularly during the past decade. Because the motivation and design of decentralization differ in each country, it is extremely difficult to compare a single notion of “decentralization” across countries.

The purpose of the decentralization is to characterize the degree of decentralization within a country and assess how well it is designed and implemented. Characterizing the degree of decentralization is useful for monitoring how the roles and responsibilities of different levels of government change over time within a particular country and to a lesser extent, for cross country comparisons. Assessing the design and Implementation of decentralization is important for learning if the current arrangements are likely to lead to (a) fiscal imbalance and macroeconomic instability and (b) efficient and equitable service delivery. (Service delivery is also affected by many other institutional issues and thus, is addressed in a separate).

Let us back to observe the background decentralization of Somaliland since 1960 and our reference based on former structure influence of Somali government and how it distribute the service into community in terms of primary health, education facilities, recreation venue and scale of economic growth improvement.

The decentralization service of former great Somalia, some public interest was manipulated by the local authority which were primary education, primary health, water, electricity and sanitation work all these service were implement by the local government, these service were effective and efficiently, let us an example which show what we early mention, the primary health and primary education was not paid fee while the local government is sponsored the community in this service, on the other hand according to literature published during that time every sub community village has get sufficient service all need of the community, this type of decentralization is known as administrative decentralization, the idea behind administrative decentralization is to effective and efficient public service delivery to the population around the area.

For the last two decade year since Somaliland has established it local government it has no full completed service of administrative decentralization for example it is not managed on controlling the activities of the primary schools in the capital city (Hargeisa).

The reason I like to exhibit on comprehensive illustration in the articles of local government and decentralization is the election of LG of Somaliland is near and I like to be benefit for the young candidate to study and read this article on understanding the duties, role and responsibilities of local council also to keep in mind the local councilor are not politician but they are public civil servant.

Local government administration needs more bureaucratic in whole government adoptions, let an example to Max Weber theories of bureaucratic model of civil service administration, any type of government institution (LG offices), must be hierarchies in terms of administration, written rule and regulation, authority must be based on legal rational authority.

As early said it is difficult to compare the decentralization for nation across the world but look at the similarity and different, unfortunately I have no reference of decentralization system of Somaliland which can be benchmarks, apart from some little bit literature wrote by the UN agencies and Academic for peace and development, public service delivery must be decentralized.

NB: (I dedicate these articles the Young candidate of local elections of Somaliland since they have no early exist experience of  local government approach and decentralization mechanisms, since the Somaliland has separated from Somalia there is no written policy of decentralization and local government structure there fore these article are based on the reference of Somalia local government system).

Abdisamad Hassan Mohamed
Master of Public Administration and Management (MPA),

At Kampala international university (KIU)

Ph: +252 2 4473288>

Cabdisayid10@gmail.com”>Cabdisayid10@gmail.com