By Aynal Haque

RAJSHAHI, April 10, 2022 (BSS)- Using of National Integrity Strategy (NIS)
tool has started to make the public service deliveries vibrant because it has
brought a new dimension as a result of engaging the people in the service
delivery process.

Many of the services, including cleanliness, beautification and waste removal
being delivered by the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) are seen successful by
dint of people engagement.

Golam Mohiuddin, a resident of Boaliapara, said they are getting the services
of collecting and removing the household waste every day as they become
conscious through various motivation and counseling by the corporation
constantly.

"We are also seeing transparency and accountability in both the city bhaban
and other ward offices," he said, adding that public access to the services
has been ensured to a greater extent.

Apart from this, best practice has been enhanced in many other service
deliveries contributing a lot to establishing a peoples-friendly working
atmosphere.

Dr Sharif Uddin, Chief Executive Officer of RCC, said they are working
relentlessly for reaching the NIS messages to the citizens so that they can
derive total benefits of all the services smoothly.

"We are supplementing the government effort to achieve sustainable
development goals through ensuring the issue of inclusive governance after
using the social accountability tool," he added.

RCC held a couple of stakeholders meetings besides formulating and reviewing
the NIS action plan for its successful implementation with the ultimate goal
of building a sustainable and habitable city with modern civic amenities.
 
Ethics committee meetings are held regularly and the implementation issues
are reviewed elaborately in the follow-up meeting.

In the stakeholders meeting, the issue of establishing good governance is
given priority. Working atmosphere has been developed in the service delivery
points as a result of following the decisions of ethics committee meetings.
 
More than 80 officials and staff were imparted training on the NIS tool so
that they can contribute to the field of achieving the goal through elevating
their level of confidence together with minimizing the knowledge gap.

As a whole, they were given ideas related to exploring new knowledge,
innovations and mechanisms on how to execute the tool and benefit the
citizens to enjoy hassle free services.
 
"We submit statements of the scheduled official works to the concerned
ministry and upload it in the website quarterly mandatory," Dr Sharif added.

Mayor AHM Khairuzzaman Liton said many of the key-persons were oriented about
NIS coupled with uplifting their awareness for ensuring standard service
delivery through the tool.

They were also highly informed and motivated about NIS for establishing good
governance in all the working fields.

He said the government introduced the NIS in 2012 in order to ensure good
governance, fundamental rights, political and socio-economic coherence,
freedom and justice.

Parvez Raihan, Deputy Director of Regional Public Administration Training
Centre (RPATC), said they are providing necessary training to the NIS-related
officers and staff so that they can play pioneering roles to implement the
tool in their respective working fields in public offices.

In addition to the issue-based ones, they are imparting training on the five
social accountability tools along with different other scheduled courses,
including modern office management, financial management and conduct and
discipline, for wide-ranging use of the tools.

Prof Pronab Kumar Pandey of the Department of Public Administration in
Rajshahi University (RU) opined that the NIS tool is being detected as an
epoch-making initiative of the government as it has created spaces of
ensuring accountability and transparency in the public service deliveries.

The public in general have already started witnessing the scenario in most of
the delivery points. He further said, "Still we'll have to go a long way to
get full facility of the NIS."

Main thrust of the tool is to provide a system of governance that creates
trust among citizens. It recognises that the institutions of the country
require watchdogs within the general population to keep these accountable.

 
The venture has also generated scopes of preventing corruption and
irregularities in the public procurement and other service deliveries. Time
has come to create more awareness among the masses to attain the desired
yield, Prof Pandey added.