Woeful state of public service

A two-day conference on 'Inclusive and gender responsive public services: Reality, challenges and opportunities' organised jointly last week by the Brac Institute of Governance and Development, Action Aid Bangladesh, Urban Forum CARE Bangladesh and Christian Aid Bangladesh has once again confirmed a long held perception about public services in the country. When it comes to receiving public services by the common people, it is a tale of unmitigated ordeal they are compelled to go through. The reasons for this are what the conference has rightly identified as lack of inclusive policy, monitoring, transparency and accountability. In the absence of inclusive policy, the average and common people are ignored by service points everywhere. Service providers consider themselves placed in a higher station compared with service seekers of modest means and of little or no influence. This indeed is a perverse notion and its legacy is maintained right from the colonial administration. The servants of the republic have thus each turned a monarch virtually. It has expedited their unearned monetary gains beyond limit.

When a sub-registrar or a fourth class employee of the Power Development Board can amass as much money as to build several palatial houses on top of acquiring various other moveable and immoveable property, it only exposes the systemic weakness of service sectors. First, the preparation of a centralised budget without involvement of the people at the grassroots level is faulty. Then, those people considered disadvantaged contribute more to development but they are left out from the development planning. The lower the social standing of people, the greater is the indifference to them in development planning. Actually, the underprivileged segments of the population deserved greater focus at the time of budget allocation but the opposite is happening. One stark example is the allocation in the health sector. The budget allocation for the sector was 4.71 per cent in the fiscal year (FY), 2016-17 but it was 6.02 per cent in FY 2009-10.

While services provided by the public sectors are vitiated by corruption and harassment, many of the essential services are privatised. Service in such cases improves no doubt to a large extent but for the common people the cost proves too high. Treatment at quality private hospitals is meant only for the moneyed people. People of modest means cannot even think of receiving treatment there. On the other hand, some of the private healthcare facilities run by unqualified or even fake physicians or nurses cause grievous harm or even death to patients. Had there been a rational and equalitarian health policy, such undesirable developments could be avoided.

Good governance and institutionalisation actually hold the key to bringing people of the bottom half under rational and just administration. The point at which administration turns into service to the people in its true sense of the term should be the ultimate aim. To that end, the system has to be geared to rolling like a well oiled machine with monitoring and supervision ensuring its smooth functioning. Thus transparency of public services will also be established. This done, no one can be deprived of his or her due.