A ripple in development - Norad

1.4 Complaint mechanismsHave effective mechanisms been put into place through which households can presentconcerns and complaints about aid programmes?Complaint mechanisms are closely related to information flows. Severaldocuments make the point that many complaints arose because of poorinformation flows. Hasan notes that one of the lessons learned by theADB-financed ETESP project was that “timely and suffi cient informationhelps reduce confl ict and complaints” (Hasan and Nicolas, 2008, p. 32).Wall (2006) provides a good overview of various post-tsunami complaintmechanisms and includes brief case studies on the KecamatanDevelopment Program (KDP) system in Indonesia , on the SuAK anticorruption NGO in Indonesia, and on the Disaster Relief MonitoringUnit (DRMU) in Sri Lanka . While the KDP system was an establishedon for this long-running World Bank financed project, the DRMU wasspecially set up by the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission. DRMUhad received 17,000 complaints by October 2006 4 . However, Oxfamnoted that there were gaps in the provision of complaint mechanisms(Oxfam International, 2007c, p. 8).In Indonesia the BRR had two grievance mechanisms, Satuan AntiKorupsi (SAK – Anti Corruption Unit) and Badan Pengawas (SupervisoryBoard) comprising of various NGOs, universities and other respectedinstitutions , to provide community oversight of rehabilitationand reconstruction activities. SAK operated under the BRR Deputy forSupport Services and is supported by staff , mostly detailed from theSupreme Audit Agency (BPK). SAK submits regular reports to BadenPengwas. SAK had received 1,030 complaints up to the end of September2006. Of these 40% related to tendering issues, and 16% related toproject implementation.SAK was originally responsible to BAPEL (The BRR ’s ImplementationCoordination Board), but this was shifted to Badan Pengawas in2007. Since their establishment, SAK and Badan Pengawas have beenreceiving complaints and queries from the public through walk-in complainants,letters, e-mails, SMS text messages, phone calls, media stories,and information obtained during field visits by their staff .In August 2005 BRR proposed to the Asian Development Bank(ADB) that the SAK mechanism be considered as the complaint handlingmechanism for the ADB funded Earthquake and Tsunami EmergencySupport Project. ADB declined, because of concerns about mixinggeneral complaints with those about corruption , vague informationabout the complaints procedure, and the SAK’s reporting line to BAP-EL. ADB therefore supported the establishment of a complex multichannel,cascading complaints mechanism (figure 3). However, it was4However, the UN gives the total number of complaints at 19,000 by May 2006 (ECOSOC,2006, p. 41).19