Urban Local Governance in Bangladesh and recommendation for improving the urban governance

Due to high density of population, urbanization in Bangladesh is growing earlier which is creating extra pressure on local governance to stay up with the rising demand of basic services.  The local Government of Bangladesh is mainly responsible to supply all types of civic facilities to the people. In the urban local government, the city corporations are for large cities and paurasavas are for secondary cities and small towns. At present there have 12 City corporations and 327 municipal corporations/ paurasavas in eight divisions of Bangladesh. The City corporations and municipal corporations are led by the councils where council’s chairperson and councilors are elect by direct elections. And they are controlled by Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (MoLGRD&C). The City Corporations and municipalities are dependent on the fund of central government based on Annual Development Plans (ADP). The received fund from the central government is not enough for the development of the city. Local Government collects revenue which is another source of fund. By the way their capacity and resources are not enough to meet the development need of the city. Other service providing agencies like WASA (Water Supply and Sewerage Authority), DPHE (Department of Public Health Engineering), LGED (Local Government Engineering Department), RAJUK (Rajdhani Unnayon Kartripakhya) etc are also responsible for the city development works and important service.

Recommendations

1. A strong coordination and well communication is indeed across the all responsible agencies.
2. The urban local governments are dependent on a historically centralized national government system which is needed to change. A well-organized policy planning and implementation is indeed.
3. The capacity and resources of City corporations and municipal corporations are needed to keep up with the current demand.
4. The overall management system in Local Governance system is needed to be improved with qualified personals and capacity building mechanism.
5. A well-organized community participation is needed for local government decision making purposes.
6. The fund received by the local Government is not enough which is needed to be taking care of.
7. A need and gap analysis is needed to be done in urban areas especially in the low-income urban areas.