Socio-economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts - chtdf

HDRCSocio-economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill TractsCHAPTER XIXACCESS TO LOCAL GOVERNMENTAND NATION BUILDING INSTITUTIONSAND COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT14419.1 IntroductionThis chapter describes the status of access of the CHT households to various LocalGovernment and Nation Building Institutions, and the status of empowerment of thecommunity members. The access to local government institutions including union levelinstitutions, upazila and district level institutions, and CHT regional level institutions hasbeen analyzed in section 19.2. The community empowerment status has been analyzed insection 19.3.19.2 Access to Local Government and Nation Building Institutions19.2.1 The institutionsBangladesh is a unitary state and the country is divided into 6 administrative divisions, 64districts, 508 upazilas, 4,466 unions, and 87,316 villages. Each division is divided intoseveral districts whereas each district is divided into several upazilas. Each upazila comprisesseveral unions and each union comprises several villages. The local government institutionsin the plain land comprise three tiers including Union Parishad (UP), Upazila Parishad, andthe District Council. At present, there is no elected representative body of the UpazilaParishad and the District Council. The elected representative body exists only in the UnionParishad (UP) which is set up with the chairman and 9 members including 3 female members.The administrative setup of the CHT is different from other parts of the country. There is adual administrative system in the CHT: a general administrative set up, and a traditionaladministrative set-up. The highest level body of the general administrative set-up of the CHTis the Regional Council comprised of the chairman and 15 members. The lower hierarchy ofthe Regional Council is the Hill District Council comprised of the chairman and 4 members(ideally it should be 30 members). The next lower hierarchy is the Upazila Parishad followedby Union Parishad (UP). On the other hand, the highest level authority of the traditionaladministrative set-up of the CHT is the Circle. There are three circles: Chakma Circlecomprises Rangamati district, part of the Kagrachari district and a very small part of theBandarban district; Mong Circle comprises the rest of the Khagrachari district; and theBomongh Circle comprises Bandarban district and a small part of the Rangamati district. Acircle comprises several “mouzas” while a“mouza” comprises several “Paras” (equivalent tovillage in the mainstream society). While the chief of the Circle is called the “Raja” or“Circle Chief”, the chief of the “mouza” and “para” are called the “Headman” and “Karbari”respectively. While the UP serves as the lowest local-level-administrative unit as in the caseof the mainstream society, the “Headman” and the “Karbari” serve as the traditional locallevel-administrativeunits in the CHT. The UP mainly performs the development functionsand partly revenue functions such as collecting taxes of the Hat/bazaar, etc. The “Headman”/“Karbari” is mainly responsible for collecting land taxes. Besides these administrativeinstitutions, there are certain institutions serving people such as Family Welfare Centre(FWC), Sub-assistant Agriculture Office, Forest Department/Bit/Range offices, Department