No direct election for chairman and mayor posts, Local Government Reform Commission recommends
Highlights:
- Chairman and mayor to be made from elected members and councillors
- Elections for all five types of local government institutions to be held under a single schedule
- Full-time and part-time members and councillors to be elected
- Three wards in each union parishad exclusively for female candidates
- Commission recommends one-third of the total collected VAT be allocated to local governments
The Local Government Reform Commission has recommended abolishing the direct election system for chairman and mayor positions in union parishads, upazila parishads, zila parishads, municipalities, and city corporations.
Instead, only members and councillors will be directly elected by the public, and chairmen and mayors will be elected from among them in a second phase.
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The commission, led by Professor Tofail Ahmed, made a total of 51 broad recommendations in its final report. The commission submitted its two-part, 500-page report to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus today.
Later, at a press conference at the Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka, Tofail Ahmed presented a summary of the report. Other commission members and the Chief Adviser's Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam were also present.
Regarding the commission's recommendations, Professor Tofail Ahmed said the commission has proposed a complete overhaul of the election system for the local government institutions.
Elections for all five types of local government institutions should be held under a single schedule, the commission recommends. Under this system, members and councillors will be elected directly by the people, and then the chairpersons and mayors will be chosen from among them.
Chairpersons and mayors will select several individuals to work full-time with them. These full-time members or councillors will receive separate salaries, while the others will not work full-time.
Government or private employees will be eligible to contest in the part-time positions. The recommendation aims to remodel local government institutions after the national parliament. To that end, the commission suggested unifying the separate laws for the five institutions into a single law.
Additionally, there will be three wards in each union parishad exclusively for female candidates, unlike the current system where nine wards are divided into three for women. This change is meant to enhance their functional involvement.
The commission also recommended structural changes to the upazila parishads and the initiation of elections in zila parishads. The number of union parishad wards should be increased based on population, up to 39, though there should be at least nine wards in each.
The commission chief emphasised the need for increased government funding for local government institutions. Currently, they receive less than 5% of the national budget. The commission recommended increasing this, suggesting that one-third of the total collected VAT be allocated to local governments.
To ensure access to justice, the commission recommended establishing full-fledged civil and criminal courts at the upazila level and introducing alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. It also proposed abolishing the Village Courts, citing their misuse.
The recommendation to form a Local Government Commission also came from the reform commission. In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, alongside the Headman and Karbari system, local governance should be introduced, it said.
To make the Ministry of Local Government more effective, the commission proposed renaming it, enhancing coordination between its two departments, and streamlining engineering operations under a unified structure.
Professor Tofail Ahmed criticised that although union, upazila, zila, municipality, and city corporations are termed local governments in Bangladesh, they are not functioning as actual governance systems. These structures still follow the colonial administrative framework, offering no real autonomy. Ideally, these should function as the smallest democratic institutions of the state.
