Thursday, November 22, 2007 ‘Money woes’ deter good governance
FINANCIAL constraints discouraged other local government units (LGUs) from replicating other units’ practices, which are considered as the best in the region.
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) 7 has identified these systems through its program on Good Practices in Local Governance: Facility for Adaptation and Replication (Go-Far).
Funding problems also deter LGUs from maximizing their potential or completing the phases of their programs because for one, there is no absolute assurance that funding sources will continue providing for them.
“What we can do is teach those who want to learn how to manage the resources they have to come up with projects and be a broker to private institutions that could help them in the funding,” said DILG Regional Director Pedro Noval.
Go-Far, now on its second year, is the first project of DILG that promotes replication of good practices to support government efforts to achieve the millennium development goals.
Through this, DILG is able to identify eight areas of documented best practices in Central Visayas.
Rehabilitation
Three of these are in Cebu—the new approach to penology at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), Bundok Nutrisyon Project of Danao City, and Community-based Waterworks System of Barangay Tabok in Mandaue City.
In order to be identified as an LGU with best practices, its programs must be innovative, gives service and economic
opportunities to the constituents, and it exercises enterprise power, said DILG Assistant Director Lilibeth Famacion.
“For example, in Barangay Tabok in Mandaue City, residents identified lack of water as their major problem. So they constructed water tanks and provided water very cheaply to the residents and even to neighboring barangays. Such project also reduced risk of illnesses among their children,” she said.
Quezon City and Dumaguete City were already able to replicate the strategies of the CPDRC in their own jails, said Noval.
She said that LGUs can seek for funding on their own or can ask DILG for assistance in searching funding sources such as the United Nations Development Programme, which provided financial assistance for the implementation of Go-Far in the past two years.
To sustain Go-Far, DILG will also establish more relationships with members of the private sector for resource mobilization and provide capability trainings to LGUs and to its own personnel. (NRC)
