Baucau visit highlights importance of the joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme in Timor-Leste<

News

1 June

Baucau visit highlights importance of the joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme in Timor-Leste

Representatives from UNDP-UNCDF, the Government of Timor-Leste and the donor community visited Baucau to see firsthand the success of the joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme in the district .

Florindo Pereira, Secretary of State for Public Administration Reform from the Ministry of State Administration and Territorial Management, and UNDP Country Director, Mikiko Tanaka, were accompanied on a field visit by donor representatives from Irish Aid, the Spanish Cooperation and the EC. The objective of the visit was to get an impression of the impact on the programme on the ground and see how it affects people's lives.

The team met with the District Administrator in Baucau to discuss achievements and challenges and visited two project sites - a secondary school in Abaco Suco and a health post in Ostico Suco and talked to project beneficiaries.

The joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP) supports the establishment of accountable and effective local government. LGSP and its predecessor programs have been supporting the piloting of local government systems through the Local Development Program (LDP), paving the way for local authorities to receive increasing responsibilities in the context of decentralization.

In addition, the program has been supporting the Ministry of State Administration in drafting the policy framework and legislation for decentralization, including the decentralization laws, which were submitted for approval to the National Parliament in 2009.

The Local Development Programme (LDP) started with support from UNCDF and Irish Aid in 2004, initially in four, later in eight pilot districts. In late 2009, the government of Timor-Leste decided to increase the coverage of the program to all 13 districts in Timor-Leste, making it a nation-wide local development program as of early 2010.

The programme supports participatory local planning, budgeting, procurement, service delivery and monitoring, strengthening local capacities through a "learning by doing" approach and additional trainings. Local pilot assemblies are provided with government funding, allowing them to prioritize project proposals from the villages through a bottom-up prioritization process.

"Although the main objective of the program is to develop and test processes and procedures for local governance, the LDP has made a real difference for people in mostly remote communities supported communities, supporting the construction of schools, health posts, water supply and other small-scale infrastructure worth more than USD 4 million since 2005", says Secretary of State Florindo Pereira.

"At the Health Post in the village of Ostico we now have between 20 and 30 patients per day. Until early 2010, people in Ostico had to travel more than 4 kilometers to the next health post with no public transport available", says Antonio Guterres, District Administrator of Baucau. He also believes that the LDP is more responsive to citizens needs and more cost-effective, compared to other programs.

The Suco Chief from Ostico explained how the planning process worked in practice for the construction of the Health post: "the entire village had a day long consultation to decide which of three projects to submit to the local development programme. The community decided that this health post was the most important to them". Project proposals are submitted by village communities for approval by a District Assembly, where representatives from the sucos choose between competing project proposals in a district.

"I think this bottom-up approach is very important so that communities not only have ownership, but also that they police the process and ensure that the contractor delivers what was agreed", stated Eoghan Walsh, Head of Mission from Irish Aid in Timor-Leste.

The roadmap for decentralization foresees the establishment of future municipalities at the current district level. Three new local government laws define the boundaries, role and institutional structure of the municipalities. One of the laws was passed in June 2009 and the other two are pending approval. The joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP) helps prepare districts for decentralization following municipal elections, which are planned to take place in 2013.