Financial Times

Garbage issue at local polls

We return to a subject we discussed some weeks back on the environment and garbage collection. One of the issues raised by environmentalists and World Bank experts, at a recent business forum on the environment, is that the public itself is responsible for the environmental crisis in the country.
Speakers at that forum spoke on the “not in my backyard” syndrome where the responsibility of residents – as they see it – lies only as long as garbage is not in your own backyard. Whether it is dumped in another’s garden or on a public highway is of no concern to others.

We were also told that residents are to blame for not electing local representatives to take care to improve local facilities and other needs because election on the basis of the politics of the candidate and national issues. Anyway now’s the chance to make things right as Sri Lanka heads into yet another series of elections with the conduct of local government elections in April.

As political parties scramble to win municipal and urban councils, and pradeshiya sabhas, voters can demand from their local representative or whoever they vote for to deliver the goods in terms of good roads, regular garbage collection, a public-friendly council and quick response to the customer’s (resident’s) needs. Business organizations in the area should also respond to the call for councils to be accountable. Requests for funding political parties should be accompanied by demands for politicians to be accountable.

Together, residents and business organizations can bring pressure on local authorities to work for the people, not for themselves. Given the growing demand for governance and accountability and the huge outcry over garbage collection, this is the ideal opportunity for residents for example in Colombo, Dehiwela-Mount Lavinia or Kandy to make sure councillors are elected on iron-clad assurances of fulfilling their promises.

Under the parliamentary system, it is near impossible to make members of parliament accountable for developing or improving a village, town or district since there are many MPs who represent a district and there is a tendency to pass the buck when it comes to accountability.

However the issue of accountability can become a reality even though the same voting system prevails at local government level since everyone knows their councillors who probably live in an adjoining lane or a few roads away.
Thus he or she is seen being responsible for that area. There are many occasions when councillors who have failed to respond to the needs of residents, have lost the election at the next round.

Yet, there should be more effective ways of making councillors accountable in the days and months soon after they are elected, instead of waiting for another election to show the voter’s disgust.

Here it would be useful for local village groups, citizens’ committees and even NGOs involved in policy and the welfare of residents to come up with some common strategies to make local councils and their members work for the people.

Often residents, and that includes business organisations, elect their local councillor on the basis of party loyalty or a national issue, instead of sticking to local issues as the priority need. This has been evident at many elections in the past and results in council members ignoring their constituencies as they were never or rarely elected on issues like garbage collection, poor roads, water, etc Well … here’s the chance now to get it right and elect representatives on the strength of local issues.

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