Abdifatah Husien Dahir
Monday December 4, 2017
The Somaliland local governments have been an essential entities in balancing to those of the central government and in the interests of the local residents as they satisfy the common community needs, despite the overwhelming challenges the Somaliland municipalitieshave faced in addressing the intended services overthe last decades.
The local councils were moderately introduced to facilitate the burden of the tasks and support the smooth implementation of the strategic plans in place, since then almost every attempt dramatically failed to bring the expected outcomes and the fruitful aspirations which ended up into absurd situations, the services were not sufficiently delivered andnever-ending greediness for power were always contested ,challenged and propagated on the media outlets as well and needless to mention is the poor institutional capacities that are almostat the peak of the issues.In this regard, the Somaliland citizens have usually shown an extreme concerns over the disorganized functions of the local governments/councilswhereby recommendations put forward to the improvements be made as part of fast trucking the requirements they needed to assume and carry on within the sphere of their own local authorities.
In the light of this, I am about to draw the attention of the president-elect and thepublic at large to the importance of steering the wheel of the municipalities in wing-wing drive model for a sustainable development so asto be realized in the course of the term of the president elect over the upcoming 5 years.Firstly, there is a need for the government to emphasize on the status of the local government’s role in the overall good governance and the development, in which there should be a Ministry of Local councils and governments to be established in order to specifically coordinate and give the intended directions and accountability.
The government also ought to offer a merit based awards for the achievements of the local councils on a yearly basis to motivate a healthy competition among them
Finally, What I would like to share with the new government is that they should more likely achieve aspirations of the development goals by initially setting a front line strategic cooperationwith the local governments in addressing the basic needs of the urban context.
According to the World Bank, It’s estimated that over 80% of the global GDP and economic growth is generated within the cities,and that we the Somaliland citizens desperately look forward to the social development and the environmental focus, last but not least contribute to an outstanding compatible cities that are clean, green and with the livability infrastructures and services in particular