A New seminar for citizen's voice

Communities on the margins of the nation

14/06/2009

 

There is considerable evidence to confirm that not all citizens on the land of Egypt have the same area of government interest , And not all at the center of its consideration, but that fall outside this focus is much more of those who fall within the fact that the disruption of the balance of development between the different geographical sectors in this country , and the flow of positive outputs to categories and regions at the expense of certain groups and other areas were left in poverty and the denial and suffering.

The citizen's voice project disclose in each time the different actors of the project which implemented by Maat and disclose convinced of the rationale for this theory, which shed light on the places of wound in the body of the society resulting from the absence of equitable distribution of development returns, which cause severe pain for a large segment of citizens who were destined to be residents of the villages and slums and single away from the place of consideration of the executive bodies.

Maat was held its latest discussions of the citizen's voice project in the village of Al-Deeb, of the Zagazig Center in Al Sharkia governorate on Saturday, June 13, 2009, and it was the fourth seminar held in governorate .

Citizen's voice project is juridical development project implemented by Maat In collaboration with the Foundation for the Future (FFF) in a number of governorates and in coordination with the Egyptian civil institution in each governorate, where the seminar was held in coordination with AlMashrek Foundation for Development and Population, the project aims to build a mechanism for communication between citizens and members of elected local people's congresses and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of response and members of boards local people and the development of effective means to identify the needs of citizens.

And seminars aimed at raising the awareness of citizens, the work of local people's councils and raise their ability to assess the work of elected members who represent them on these boards, and seminars designed to monitor the local problems and the urgent needs of the citizens and how council members interact with citizens in the solution of these problems, As well as the dissemination of concepts and culture of decentralization and good local governance among citizens at the local level and prepare them to deal with the variables associated with the empowerment of localities.

The seminar revealed the existence of problems in the interaction and communication between members of the local people's councils and citizens, given the low awareness of citizens for the role of local people's councils and non-participation in these elections of the councils, which creates the feeling among members of the non importance of the citizens assessing them .

At the same time it creates a sense of indifference among the citizens towards the members, and the final result is a backlog of problems which has no solution for the absence of a mechanism to link between the executive and citizens.

A seminar revealed Of a group of community-based problems in the village and surrounding villages, it may be on top of all this is the subordination of villages to more than one local unit at the same time, which is a new evidence of confusion of administrative divisions in Egypt and its random, citizens participate in the seminar attributed the cause of most of the problems of the village to the confusion and duplication of administrative subordination to the group of neighboring villages, where this does not conclusively determine where the responsibility rests in the event of default.

The most prominent problems faced the village - which is almost a general feature of the villages in Egypt - the poor condition of interruption of electricity services, as well as the frequent lack of street lighting, and in the main entrance of the village which is about 2 km , far distance from schools of different stages and the absence of a health unit.

Thus, we believe that the factual observations tell us that many of the areas in Egypt pays a price for the development of local and random errors and neglect of the rules of the local executive bodies and the absence of popular control, All of this, makes us in Maat call for review of the local current system in Egypt with its trends, philosophy, governing legislation and its current subdivisions , making mechanisms and decision-making in it and its constitute roots and the Executive, We also believe that this must be done within the framework of genuine partnership between the three parties, namely government agencies and civil society organizations and citizens, and that to ensure the change to the better and as responsive to the needs of citizens and to eliminate the development disparities between societies.