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World Bank report says poor people should be in charge

The World Bank yesterday called on governments in developing countries to allow poor communities to monitor more closely basic services such as health, education and water distribution, and improve their delivery.

The report Making Services Work for Poor People, released yesterday on the sidelines of the week-long annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the World Bank, noted that key services continued to fail poor people across the world and suggested three ways to improve their delivery.

"By increasing poor clients' choice and participation in service delivery, so they can monitor and discipline providers ... by raising poor citizens' voice through the ballot box and making information widely available ... by rewarding the effective and penalizing the ineffective delivery of services to poor people," it said.

The report did not advocate the systematic privatization of basic services, noting that "in practice, no country has achie-ved significant improvement in child mortality and primary education without government involvement."

"While there are frequent problems with public services, it would be wrong to conclude that government should give up and leave everything to the private sector," it added.

"Instead of getting caught in the public versus private sector argument, the only issue that really matters is whether the mechanism that delivers key services strengthens poor people's ability to monitor and discipline providers, raises their voice in policymaking and gets them the effective services they need for their families," the report said.

The report gave concrete examples on how services in developing countries improved by involving the communities themselves.

In Uganda for instance, the report noted that publishing the budget of a primary school increased the share of the money actually spent on the school from 13 percent to 80 percent.
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