Decentralization in Sierra Leone - Research for Development

Decentralization in Sierra Leonegovernment might have acted recently to “bring local government to heel”, he went on, buthe had reminded colleagues that the LGA was the law and that the APC’s last electionmanifesto had contained an explicit commitment to decentralization.In the short term, the most likely scenario is that GoSL policy makers will continue with theirattempts to accommodate competing political interests in local government. While this willcontinue to militate against policy coherence, they will also leave local councils with somespace to develop their own political-administrative niche. The discussion now turns to thelocal councils’ strategies for dealing with outside political pressure and resource constraints.3.2 Political Drivers of Bureaucratic RationalityLocal councillors and council leaders interviewed by the research team were understandablykeen to list the local projects they had successfully implemented. These success storiesincluded secondary school science laboratories refurbished with DSDP support in Makeni, anew Junior Secondary School in Koidu, the visit of a free eye and dental clinic to KonoDistrict, the conversion of an old colonial-era sports club into a civic and leisure centre in Boand numerous schools, Primary Health Units (PHU’s), market enclosures, water wells, andsanitary facilities either built or refurbished with council funds in rural areas.But all interlocutors at this level expressed frustration that local council responsibilities andresources were not greater. Councillors complained that even when councils build schools orPHUs, there may not always be sufficient funds for furniture, equipment or salaried staff.Furthermore, it was hard for them to get across to the public that they are only responsible forsome services and not others. Many councillors had overseen maintenance projects on feederroads in their wards and had then found members of the public asking why, when they hadpaid local axes, the councils weren’t also repairing badly eroded main roads. Councillorstherefore felt aggrieved that they were shouldering blame for problems outside their control.A council leader argued in a similar vein that if local government was “truly independent”, itshould be a simple matter for a council to be informed of a broken culvert on a rural road,send out an engineer to cost the repairs and then hire a contractor to carry them out. Theinterviewee was alluding here to the fact that the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) stilltakes charge of all repair works that are beyond the capacity of a gang of labourers armedwith picks and shovels. The SLRA’s reluctance to devolve functions to the local councils hasprompted some commentator to suggest that money is easily siphoned off from road contractsand that the contracting process remains centralized for that specific reason (e.g. Robinson,2010). But the fundamental problem here is that the original Local Government (Assumptionof Functions) Regulations of 2004 do not allocate the local councils any greaterresponsibilities in road maintenance than verge cutting, pothole filling and ditch clearing.Another complaint from local councils was that other development agencies, whethergovernmental or non-governmental, rarely keep them informed of their activities. Somecouncillors spoke of encountering contractors in their wards who told them, curtly, that itwasn’t their business to ask questions. NGOs, it was alleged, often neglect to inform localcouncils of their activities even though Sierra Leone’s National Decentralization Policyrequires NGOs to register with them. Many INGOs working in Sierra Leone are indeedreluctant to cooperate closely with the local councils for fear that political interests willcompromise their own core values and operating standards (Fanthorpe, 2009). When thispoint was put to the councillors, they retorted angrily that local councils are more rigorouslymonitored than any other governmental agency and so deserve greater respect.Fanthorpe Consultancy Ltd Page 21