Afghans Slam Unaccountable Local Officials

With no real oversight, provincial government officials in Afghanistan do whatever they want and do not answer to the people who voted them in, according to participants in recent IWPR discussions.

At events in the Ghor, Ghazni and Parwan regions, audiences of around 100 people took appointed officials like provincial governors as well as elected local councillors to task.

One villager from Ghor, Qayum Shadab, asked why the provincial governor and district government chiefs got away with pursuing their own personal advantage rather than serving the public.

The provincial governor’s spokesman, Abdul Hai Khatibi, who was among the invited speakers, denied that local government was inefficient but said people’s expectations were far higher than what officials were realistically able to deliver.

In Ghazni, provincial councillor Hamida Gulistani said regional government departments were supposed to report to the council on a quarterly basis, but this had been a failure over the last ten years since there was neither transparency nor accountability.

“The governor, [Ghazni city] mayor and departmental directors don’t attend the council. They don’t answer questions raised by the people’s representatives,” she said. “They send low-ranking subordinates who have neither the information nor the authority to answer questions.”

Some audience members at the debates argued that provincial council members were even worse than the governors and district heads.

“We elected you as our representatives and we voted for you so that you’d defend our rights and help us when we faced problems and difficulties,” said Mahbub, an audience member in Ghor. “But unfortunately, none of you addressed our problems. Now we don’t know what exactly your job at the provincial council is.”

Ramazan Akhundzada, a member of Ghor’s provincial council, accepted that the body had failed to answer to voters and to ensure that services were delivered to them.

“The provincial council has lacked the efficiency needed in its work,” he said.

Speakers at all three discussion events agreed that accountability was a basic principle, along with rule of law.

Abdul Wahed Hashimi, the head of the provincial department of information and culture in Parwan, said it was people’s right to know what government was doing for them. Officials had to account for their performance, and especially for failures and mistakes, through the media, he said.

This report is based on an ongoing series of debates conducted as part of IWPR’s Afghan Youth and Elections programme.