Decentralization in Sierra Leone - Research for Development

Decentralization in Sierra Leoneheadquarters issuing orders to local staff over the management of functions that are supposedto be devolved and coordination between MDAs and councils has a great deal of room forimprovement. But at least Freetown newspapers are no longer full of stories of Minstersunilaterally securing donor funds to build schools or hospitals in their provincial home areasand then getting embroiled in protracted fights with other top politicians seeking to havethese amenities re-located to their areas.On the other hand, patronage politics continues to predominate in Sierra Leone. Localcouncils are under pressure from other authorities, notably MPs and chiefs, for access to theirresources or for a share of the political credit for their programmes. The notion that powerfulpoliticians can arrange for resource allocations to the councils to be blocked if they don’t getbenefits from them was aired in some FGDs. Paradoxically, many grassroots intervieweesreserved their greatest praise for benevolent patrons who deliver resources to theircommunities. Local councillors are often frustrated precisely because they don’t controlsufficient resources to operate in this manner.A related problem here is that enhancing the voice of poor people in local government can bemore apparent than real. When the Drivers of Change team visited Bo in 2005, the walls ofthe city council chamber were plastered with flip chart sheets from “rapid results” needsassessments. The Bombali District chairman gave the team a video tape of the same exercise.Local councils’ diligence in public consultation continues to be assessed by CLoGPAS.However, enhancing poor people’s voice in local government has little intrinsic value unlessit leads to concrete action.This is the fundamental problem with the WDCs. The questionnaire survey reveals that amajority of respondents had knowledge of WDCs but that levels of public interaction andsatisfaction with them in all districts except Bo are very low. FGD participants, unprompted,hardly mentioned WDCs at all. Some councillors also reported that grants for WDCs, whichbegan in 2009, have allowed these committees to operate effectively for the first time. Butthey also pointed out that many WDC members have to walk several miles to attend meetingsand are never going to carry on doing that if they don’t get at least a meal afterwards. Recentholdups in the disbursement of these grants have, they claimed, seen all WDC activity cease. 9A point raised by members of the research team was that local councils might do better bydeveloping relationships with local CSOs and CBOs and discussing development needs inpublic workshops rather than relying on WDCs. Some NGO projects (e.g. ENCISS) havefocussed specifically on strategies for enhancing engagement between local councils andCSOs/CBOs, but more work needs to be done in this area.Political pressure from above and below has nevertheless encouraged local councils toconcentrate on their unique selling point, which is delivering the services identified andprioritized by the local populace. For example, when a councillor bangs a table a table at ameeting and demands action for water wells to be dug in a remote rural ward where villagersare dying of dysentery she is demonstrating, like any benevolent patron, a moral concern fora community she considers her own. But unlike other patrons she can be voted out of office ifshe fails to retain her constituents’ confidence. Furthermore, her demands will be recorded incouncil minutes and will have a chance of being prioritized in council development plans.Getting the wells dug is the political and professional responsibility of the local council, not9 According to figures obtained from the LGFD, transfers to local councils for the year 2011 do notinclude grants for WDCs.Fanthorpe Consultancy Ltd Page 43