Articles
Lecture Series on Roles, Responsibilities and Administrative Skills of Municipal & District Councils
Since the adoption of the Organic Law in 2008, the NCDD secretariat has overcome a number of challenges through continuous policy consultations with concerned ministries and organizations. Capacity building for sub-national administration is a major issue still to be solved.
Responding to this need, the Cambodian Civil Society Partnership organized a Lecture Series on the Roles, Responsibilities and Administrative Skills of Municipal/District Councils in Kampong Cham province on May 31, 2011 presided over by H.E Mr. Lann Chorn, provincial council chief. 92 participants including 10 officials from various provincial departments, 34 district council members and 48 representatives from civil society organizations attended the event.
The main objective was to contribute to building the capacity of sub-national administration on Management and Development according to the decentralization and de-concentration reforms and democratic development. The event also aimed to discuss how to solve the ongoing challenges that are slowing down the implementation of changes to the sub-national administration; thus, the officials were informed of work procedures stated in the 10-year national programmer and first 3-year action plan (IP3).
During the lecture, Mr. Sar Vorin, Deputy Director of the Department of Local Administration, MOI, presented the responsibilities of municipal/district administration in implementing work programs, stating that “The principle of municipality/district administration is of a public entity mandated to serve the public interest and to manage based on the principle of administrative consensus in order to develop, to promote and to sustain the democratic development by Decentralization and De-concentration policy”. He went on to explain that “municipality/district administrations are responsible for managing and making legislative and executive decisions, and are accountable to the people and the government based on the constitution, laws, sub-degree and other legal instruments”.
Mr. Prak Sam Oeurn, Deputy Director of the Department of Local Administration, MOI, then outlined the internal rules and showed examples of internal management tools and report templates to be used by sub-national administrations in all meetings. The main content of the internal rules covers council meetings, agenda, orders and decisions, authorities of the chairperson and councilors, committees, roles, duties, responsibilities and authorities of Board of Governors and administrative director, meeting minutes, absence in the meeting, rules and punishments, and the adjustment and dissemination of the final document of the internal rules.
He showed participants 3 different types of report templates that should used day-to-day, such as the daily report, technical report, and visit or mission report, as well as other periodic reports like the activity report, progressive report and research report.
This one-day lecture also consisted of group discussions to reflect on challenges and solutions encountered in their daily work. Those challenges highlighted were budget shortages, resources, legal instruments, and implementers with low understanding of policies, and particularly, a lack of participation from citizens and stakeholders.
It was noted that there is a need for strong cooperation from development partners to strengthen capacity in these areas. Cambodian Civil Society Partnership focuses on this and is willing to help sub-national administration at commune/Sangkat and municipality/district fill their knowledge gap, including awareness raising of gender equality issues, by organizing trainings for council members at municipality/district and commune/Sangkat levels.
In the future, we anticipate that sub-national administrations with both women and men will be sufficiently competent, and work together to lead and develop the country towards democratic growth based on Decentralization and De-concentration.