By Md Aynal Haque

RAJSHAHI, Oct 16, 2022 (BSS) - Grassroots people have been availing scopes of improving their living and livelihood conditions as a result of implementing various demand-driven programmes by local government institutions.

Union Parishad (UP) has been working on various important activities, including communication, education, health, water supply, natural resources, agriculture, sanitation and human resource development, for elevating the livelihood of the marginalized population.

Full-length implementation of the time-fitting policies related to ensuring transparency and accountability of the small-scale investments has added new dimensions to the rural livelihoods.

A total of 1,586 concrete roads and 300 culverts were constructed through implementation of 1,786 projects aimed at improving living and livelihood conditions of the villagers in the district.
 
Besides, 4,500 tube-wells and 170 submersible pumps were installed through implementation of 540 projects for ensuring safe drinking water.
 
The infrastructural development projects were implemented in 1,914 villages in the last five years on behalf of Local Governance Support Project-3 (LGSP-3) with involvement of around Taka 74.68 crore.

The project is being implemented for uplifting living and livelihoods of around 21.37 lakh populations of 72 UPs in nine upazilas of the district since June, 2016.

Each of the UP people, including chairmen and members, were imparted training for elevating their capacity coupled with boosting their knowledge about their roles, responsibilities and mandates to their respective communities.

Demands of the people were shortlisted through ward meetings for implementation on priority basis.

"We have learnt the methods and techniques of implementing village-level projects with transparency and accountability," said Sohel Rana, Chairman of Matikata UP in Godagari Upazila, adding that the villagers are deriving total benefits of the allocated money.

LGSP-3 District Facilitator Akter Hossain told BSS that sewing machines, bicycles, sanitary napkins and hygiene materials were distributed among the women to make them self-reliant.

Apart from imparting training, 650 sewing machines among women and 174 laptops with printers were distributed among union digital centres (UDC) for human resource development.

UDCs are working as a model towards building digital Bangladesh and decentralization of public services besides providing the government and non-government information and capacity building through entrepreneurs' development.

Ziaul Haque, Entrepreneur of Huzripara UDC, said he got laptop, scanner, printer and photocopy machine from the project and each of the UDCs got need-based devices and machines from the project.

The grassroots people are getting around 100 types of digital services from the UDCs regularly. "We are reaching all the union level services to the villagers like urban people together with strengthening the digitization process," Haque added.

Many unemployed youths have got jobs after receiving training on computers from the center, he said adding students, youths and working-people are imparted training in his centre, which is helping them to be skilled.

Shariful Haque, Additional Deputy Commissioner, said different services of the district and upazila administrations are available in the centers, which are helping to save time and money of the rural people.

The centers have opened up scores of opportunities to the people including training on ICT and different job related information and how to provide the services effectively.

Shahana Akhter Jahan, Deputy Director of Local Government Section, said the LGSP-3 has impacted on the life of the public in general directly or indirectly because the field level public representatives have adopted and implemented the projects by themselves.

Only the need-based small-scale schemes were implemented under the project to meet up the fundamental needs of the people to supplement the government efforts of achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG) and building digital Bangladesh.

Deputy Commissioner Abdul Jalil said the project is being implemented with utmost transparency and accountability to attain the ultimate goals of women empowerment, skilled manpower generation and communication improvement.

As a whole, the project has attained acceptance of the grassroots population, he added.

Prof Pronab Kumar Pandey of the Department of Public Administration in Rajshahi University said ensuring transparency, accountability and citizens' participation in different development works is very urgent to establish good governance in local government institutions.