decentralisation?

Lessons from islands decentralisation?

• In the following article, Professor J. A. Ballard, Professor of Administrative Studies at the University of Papua New Guinea, focuses on the problems en countered in the Solomons in the task of decentralising government. He visited the Solomons late in June. The article is published at a time when Provincial Government in Papua New Guinea is under attack. The PNG Constituent Assembly in late July shelved immediate plans for its introduction, although the PNG Cabinet has since approved establishment of a Provincial Government Affairs Office to further look at Provincial Government in PNG, the concept of which still exists. See p 23 for Bougainville's problems.

The Solomon Islands, with a popu lation smaller than that of some dis tricts in Papua New Guinea, has been putting into effect a plan of decen tralisation over the past 18 months.

Implementation of the plan has pro ceeded far enough for councils to be gin to recognise some of their new strengths and some of their restric tions, and new balances of power are being struck at both political and administrative levels between the islands and the central government.

Some new councils, particularly in the Western District and Malaita, inherit old council boundaries and district administrative structures and the transition to the new system has been relatively smooth. Progress has been slower in other districts, especially in the Central Islands and Eastern Islands Council areas, where small island councils have been amalgamated and district administra tion must be broken down to coun cil level within the Central and Eastern Districts. Ulawa has refused to join with Makira, and so there are nine instead of the expected total of eight councils.

Within the councils, the formation of area committees at the level of electoral wards or groups of villages has proceeded furthest in Makira, Guadalcanal and Malaita, depending largely on the efforts of local council members, council clerks and district officers, but in very few areas are village committees operating as a regular and integral part of the local government system.

In Malaita, where area committees have been established in most of the 17 sub-districts, sub committees have been formed in some areas to accom modate differences among groups of villages. The area committees and their sub-committees have been par ticularly active in mobilising com munity labour for self-help contri butions to feeder road and water supply projects, and one sign of their popularity is the fact that land dis putes are increasingly referred to

them rather than to local courts for negotiated settlement.

The Malaita Council executive committee and its full-time president are heavily occupied in meeting re quests from area committees for advice on services and on land matters, and they play an important intermediary role between govern ment services and local committees.

The political restructuring of coun cils has gone smoothly, but the de centralisation of government depart ments and transfer of their field activities to council control is a much more complex and difficult matter, since it involves breaking with well established patterns of behaviour.

District administration, with the ex ception of district commissioners and magistrates, was transferred to coun cils at the beginning of 1975. In Western, Malaita and Makira coun cil areas, works and agricultural func tions have also passed to councils, together with all staff below Level 5.

Education and medical administra tion are due to be transferred to councils in 1976 and the whole pro cess is scheduled for completion by 1977.

Although the transfers have been greatly facilitated by administrative decentralisation within most depart ments during recent years, the process of transfer has required very careful planning, staging and trial runs, and even so has raised unanticipated problems. The Department of Finance upset arrangements by a last-minute withdrawal from the transfer of sub treasuries, and this has raised a whole nest of difficulties (farmers obtaining cattle fencing through the usual combination of a central-con trolled loan and a council-controlled grant must now order separately through two agencies).

Apart from departmental hesita tions, which have been eased by localisation and fresh postings, there is anxiety on the part of councils and their clerks about taking over potentially unpopular or financially

insound projects and services. Agri :ulture has been so preoccupied with idministration and training for cattle »rojects that it has fallen far behind n grant payments to farmers. And lerks would prefer to see the new listrict education boards prove their inancial viability, especially in view f reduced government support, be ore councils take responsibility for leeting community expectations in lis field.

The creation of new political insti- Jtions and the transfer of depart tental functions to them places a reat deal of pressure on council erks. Although no political decision as, as yet, been taken to phase out istrict commissioners, the clerks are "adually taking over most of their motions and, in the face of staff lortages, DCs are acting as clerks • at least two major councils. Most erks, however, are recruited from nong assistant administrative offi rs at level 5-7, who are normally )ung men with higher education but nited administrative experience.

The clerk, as chief adviser to his 'uncil, is likely to require con derable skill as an educator in aking intelligible the mysteries of

finance and the exact delimitation of council powers and responsibilities.

At the same time, he must negotiate for his council a viable relationship with services under the council’s control, those yet outside the council and, most importantly, with the De partment of Home Affairs and Minis ters in Honiara. The frustrations of the job recently led the clerk of Makira Council, Francis Hilly, to resign from the public service after almost a year in the post.

At Honiara, the focus of pressure is the Ministry of Home Affairs, through which are funnelled all re lationships between the councils and central governments. When it was the responsibility of Chief Minister Solomon Mamaloni and his Per manent Secretary, Tony Hughes, the Ministry of Home Affairs planned and pushed through arrangements for decentralisation, but the successors to this team cannot hope to have the same political clout.

They are accused by councils and clerks of paternalism, of not giving enough discretion in finance and staff arrangements, and yet are also blamed for not being tough enough to prevent Finance from reneging on

the transfer of sub-treasuries. They are expected to pick up all the un anticipated loose ends, such as the provision of central purchasing facili ties for councils now that govern ment stores have been run down in favour of private enterprise. And they face the increasingly difficult tasks of negotiating compromise be tween councils and the central govern ment during a period in which coun cils are beginning to flex their muscles.

The scope for conflict between Honiara and the councils is wide, but finance and staffing are the cen tral issues. Councils, rather than cen tral departments, receive service grants directly for the services they now control but they find that the central government still vets their ex penditure. This has raised problems particularly in Makira, one of three councils discovered to be bankrupt last year and helped by a government guaranteed bank loan.

Despite energetic and effective tax collection early this year, Makira needed an extension of its loan and found the central government un willing to oblige. At the same time Makira councillors voted themselves an increase in allowance from $l6 to $24 per council sitting, and their president an increase in salary from

Lessons from

Decentralisation

$2O to $lOO per month and managed, despite a visit from the Minister for Home Affairs, to sustain their posi tion.

Makira and other councils find, generally, that they do not have the authority that they expected. One limitation on the central government’s capacity to respond to this with further delegation is the British Treasury’s insistence on central finan cial control of any projects receiving British aid.

Although a single public service remains intact, officers below Level 5 in transferred services are under coun cil control and cannot be posted out of a council area without three months’ notice. Councils have the right to ask for the removal of staff considered incompatible, and some clerks and works officers have been transferred as a result of council re quests. For postings at Class 5 and above, councils appear to have re ceived only limited consultation so far, but are likely to insist on more.

Since the post of council clerk is as political as it is administrative some recent graduates, with support from council presidents, have made

it clear that they would be interested in the post of clerk in their home areas, but only if they could be appointed outside the public service.

At the least, decentralisation is likely to break some of the more rigid of public service precedents.

It is too early to know what effects decentralisation will have on the character of national unity in the Solomons. The politics of allocating scarce resources raised problems well before the present plans for decen tralisation were launched and would continue to do so in any event. The presence of councils with claims to substantial authority does, however, give the council areas a stronger voice in demands for funds and for the location of major projects and plant units.

The Western Council maintains that it has not received government ex penditure commensurate with its con tribution to national revenue.

Although Western (population 38,000) and Malaita (57,000) receive the same service grants, Malaita’s alert administration managed to obtain a large share of the unex pended funds for feeder roads at the end of last year. This had added fuel to Western feeling that Malaita has received an unfair allocation for highly-visible road infrastructure over recent years compared to the invest ment in Western communications.

Western would like to take over a share of government tax on its own copra production and finds con siderable interest in recent develop ments in neighbouring Bougainville.

This means that the siting of the future copra crushing mill may have to be settled on political rather than economic grounds, and there is con siderable unhappiness about the cur rent location of the only three heavy road equipment units—two in Malaita and one in Makira.

To establish effective political con sultation within a council area while consolidating council control over newly-decentralised services requires phenomenal resources of administra tive and political skills which are in short supply, both in the Solomons and in Papua New Guinea.

The major lessons for Papua New Guinea in the Solomons’ experience may be the need for very careful administrative planning and flexible implementation, together with a pro cess of continuous political consulta tion to avoid breakdowns in com munication.

The annual conference of council representatives and clerks, to be held at Honiara in October, will show whether planning and consultation have been effective so far.