Md. Abdullah Al Mamoon, PMP
Development projects in Bangladesh have been the lifeline of improvements ever since its independence. These projects, either funded by Government or International development agencies, have been mostly focused in the areas of emerging micro economy developments, poverty alleviation, establishment of infrastructures, and improvements of health, hygiene and sanitation. Irrespective of sources of funding these projects have been predominantly contributing in the ongoing
transition of the country’s agro-based economy to a cosmopolitan 21st century urbanized and semi-urbanized socio-economic structure. However, despite of noticeable changes, political violence and instability, deep-rooted corruption in the administrative framework and lack of transparency and accountability in the project governance are some of the well established encumbers in realizing the intended benefits of development projects in Bangladesh. Despite of millions of dollars expended in every year, existence of development works often remain as illusion and rhetoric to public though there are existences of hundreds of ‘Foundation Stones’ marking grand and expensive ‘Opening Ceremonies’.
Development projects in Bangladesh have been the lifeline of improvements ever since its independence. These projects, either funded by Government or International development agencies, have been mostly focused in the areas of emerging micro economy developments, poverty alleviation, establishment of infrastructures, and improvements of health, hygiene and sanitation. Irrespective of sources of funding these projects have been predominantly contributing in the ongoing
transition of the country’s agro-based economy to a cosmopolitan 21st century urbanized and semi-urbanized socio-economic structure. However, despite of noticeable changes, political violence and instability, deep-rooted corruption in the administrative framework and lack of transparency and accountability in the project governance are some of the well established encumbers in realizing the intended benefits of development projects in Bangladesh. Despite of millions of dollars expended in every year, existence of development works often remain as illusion and rhetoric to public though there are existences of hundreds of ‘Foundation Stones’ marking grand and expensive ‘Opening Ceremonies’.
Development projects are always intended to serve the people of the country with the ultimate bottom line of contributing in the growth of the national economy. These projects are generally funded by the public money paid in the form of taxes, wages, tariffs or other service charges. Though donors also provide funding for development projects, the interests in return for the donated amounts are paid from public fund. This single factor of project funding dictates to have absolute transparency and strict accountability in the management and governance of development projects. People of the country, irrespective of political motives, have constitutional right to participate in the decision making process and/or project selection process prior to undertaking any such projects. This can be in the form of conducting surveys with the majority representations in the survey strata from the most impacted area or locality or by running public poll in electronic or paper media for obtaining mass consensus. Mechanisms for disseminating the information to the public as well as relevant parliamentary and legislative bodies are crucial in keeping the people abreast with the progress of ongoing projects. Whilst from the reality instance there are inherent complexities in ensuring mass participation in development projects, this certainly doesn’t restrict in the performance of honest intention and sincere endeavors driven by the Government. There should be people’s representations as project stakeholders from the localities where project outcomes will have maximum impacts (positive or negative). Representations from opposition and creation of media partnership will facilitate in ensuring a neutral body of governance in managing the development projects which will also increase the probability of project success to a large extent.
Evaluation and impact analysis of development projects prior to projects inception and during the projects execution is significant to keep the projects aligned with intended strategic objectives. Early identification of any potential risks, probable environmental hazards and injury to the interests of public that projects outcomes may cause can be detected through a systematic and organized impact study prior to project inception. This facilitates in developing appropriate and timely risk management strategies and/or selection of alternatives. Absence of such studies will cause the recurrence of the situations that have inhibited the progress of recent development projects and exposed the Government to unnecessary but avoidable mass criticisms.
Establishment of a Project or Program Management Office (PMO) staffed with skilled human resources and transparent management strategies is extremely critical to the success of any projects irrespective of public or private sectors. Whereas it is not typically unlikely to have paucity in skilled project resources among public service holders, it is unfortunate to find uncontrollable corruptions in the administration especially in project expenditure management and decision making process. Although regardless of personal beliefs and values, civil service holders are legally and ethically required to carry out the will of the citizens by remaining politically neutral; in Bangladesh there are many empirical evidences of deviations to this most expected public trust mainly to exploit vested and personalized interests or being biased by political agenda. Added to this is the presence of ‘Spoil System’ in the public administration where civil service holders are frequently replaced with the changing of ruling parties even though some of those might be working in the important and sensitive project roles. These limiting factors seriously affect in attaining consistent, transparent and accountable governance across all development projects. A ‘Hybrid Staffing’ system regularized by the parliamentary body would enable in recruiting necessary skilled resources for the development projects. In this approach, contractual skilled resources and permanent civil service holders would be working hand in hand under clearly defined governing procedures and processes. This would ensure a neutral project governance system and minimize the scopes of corruptions through establishing check and balance in the management approach.
Project procurement is yet another foremost concerning and challenging areas in development projects. The enormous magnitudes of project procurement elicit huge vulnerability in ensuring transparency, efficiency, integrity, and upholding the public trust. During the past regimes there had been perpetual debates and proven accusations in project procurements and unfortunately the same chronicles have been allegedly repeated in some of the recent development projects. Hopes and aspirations of the people have literally wiped off as one of the most promising development projects is now facing uncertainty due to the discrepancies in administering a transparent procurement process. There are inadequacies and lack of intents in the Government hierarchy in institutionalizing a neutral procurement entity including creation of a transparent selection panel for selecting service providers for the development projects. Until and unless an impartial and politically unbiased procurement body is created with the representations of public, opposition parties, media and other relevant stakeholders, development projects will remain susceptible to increasing uncertainty and even to failure.
Managing competing requirements and demands of heterogeneous stakeholders including donor representatives in the development and Government projects is another most multifaceted challenge. Differentiated stakeholder opinions biased by political influences often associated with NIMBY (not in my back yard!) syndrome make the stakeholders expectations management even more difficult and challenging. This emphasizes on a discreet selection process of project stakeholders ensuring balanced representations and focused stakeholder management strategies.
These are some of the most prominent areas of improvement in implementing the development projects especially in Bangladesh. However, these don’t depict the full testimony of prevailing situations. These are delineations of some of the most concerning areas that have been found in the implementation of recent development projects. While indentifying and defining the areas of improvements are prerequisite for the transition to a transparent and worthwhile project governance system, it is also imperative to acclimatize the spirit of undertaking the development projects involving public money and trust. There must be integrated and collective endeavors irrespective of political motivations for ensuring the success of development projects. And only then, intended outcomes of these projects would serve the people of the country and contribute in achieving an enlightened and sustainable economic growth.
A modified version of this article was published in the 'Financial Express' on February 17, 2013.
Email: abdullah.mamoon@hotmail.com
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