Khan: ‘I prefer to work as a subcontractor.’

Nanhe Khan and her brother own a bustling road construction and maintenance business about 20 kilometers from Paramaribo in the Wanica district, the second most populous in Suriname, with a population of 77,000.

If she wants to bid on a road contract, she has to apply to a national government agency in the capital and pay a nonrefundable fee of 1 percent of the total project cost to buy a “map,” or project plan, before she can compete with a proposal.

The cost of that document, she says, is too high. “I prefer to work as a subcontractor. It is less risky,” she says.

As a result, Khan is enthusiastic about a new government reorganization program that will create 10 local elected district governments in Suriname in order to decentralize decisionmaking. Elected representatives of the districts and professional administrators will be in charge of contracts to build and improve secondary and tertiary roads.

She has high expectations for an improved business climate, and hopes it will enable her to make more productive use of the 12 trucks and 20 earth removers and bulldozers used by her company.

“Now everything is handled by the national government,” she says. “It sets the priorities, controls the procurement rules and manages the bidding process for contracts.”

If decisions are made by Wanica’s own government, she feels, “priorities will be set locally, decisions will be made quicker and projects will get done faster and cheaper.”

Starting decentralization from scratch. After decades of debate, Suriname’s central government has decided to launch a step-by-step, concrete plan to bring local self-government to the 10 administrative districts of the country where a local political system never existed previously. These local governments must be created from scratch—they need a legal framework, facilities, personnel and training.

The country’s main political parties and many nongovernmental organizations are backing the reform.

Staphorst: ‘Now there are no structured ways for local decision making.’

The leader of the National Women’s Movement, Siegmien Staphorst, says the government plan represents a break from “having the same situation for 25 years.”

“Now there are no structured ways for local decisionmaking,” she says. “There is a gap between what the government is doing and what the citizens feel should be done. Local governments need to be strengthened. Now they have no skills or capabilities. People have no concept of involvement in the development process. Once the people are involved in decisionmaking, there will be greater economic and political stability.”

Demand-driven services. The IDB supported the decentralization project with a US$4.9 million loan approved in 2001. A Project Implementation Unit was established to draft an action plan to bring autonomy to five of Suriname’s 10 administrative districts by the end of 2005. The other five districts are to be decentralized by 2010.

Instead of being governed by a presidential appointee, as now is the case, decentralized districts will be under the jurisdiction of a professional administrator chosen by elected district councils. Unlike the present structure, in which the 10 districts depend on transfer funds from the central government, the decentralized local governments will have the power to levy taxes and collect fees on property, businesses, markets, entertainment and cemeteries. They will draft five-year development plans and administer their own resources with annual budgets.

Ahmadali: ‘Decisionmaking will be demand-driven.’

“In the new system, decisionmaking will be demand-driven,” says Bas Ahmadali, the director of Suriname’s Decentralization and Local Government Strengthening Program (DLGSP). “When projects originate from the people who participate in the system, the citizens are more likely to raise the revenue they need,” he adds. Now the national government has the power to tax property, entertainment, cemeteries and markets and return the funds to the districts. In fact, the national government collection track record is either poor or nonexistent, Ahmadali observes.

The responsibilities of the local governments will include building and paving secondary and tertiary roads, drainage and irrigation, potable water supply, community police, fire protection and management of public markets.

Telephones and computers. The national government will continue to maintain control over health, education, principal paved roads, dams and dikes. It will also retain control over the main sources of fiscal revenue: the income tax and taxes on imports, gasoline and the production of gold and bauxite.

In its present phase the decentralization program consists of establishing the necessary laws and regulations, selecting and training personnel, preparing manuals and equipping the future district government offices.

In addition to an administrator, a cashier and a bookkeeper will staff each new district government office, and it will be equipped with a computer terminal, printer, telephone, financial software, a motor vehicle, a citizen information center and a bank account.

An evaluation of progress made by the DLGSP, contained in the Program Implementation Unit’s 2002–2003 annual report, noted the program has suffered from growing pains and delays.

“In the first phase there was no conductor for the orchestra and everyone played to his own melody. There was hardly any harmony,” noted the evaluation, written by Johan Lie Kiet Hing, resident advisor to the project.

The evaluation said that difficult organizational and staff problems are being addressed more effectively as the Program Implementation Unit and the supporting team of consultants gain experience. It said morale of the Implementation Unit was high and “most of the issues have been dealt with and solved.”

For a hospital, too. The reorganization of Nickerie Regional Hospital, serving an urban area of 40,000 persons 150 kilometers west of Paramaribo, represents a different kind of decentralization—this one within the national government itself.

Built with the assistance of an $8 million IDB loan approved in 1987, the hospital is the only one in Suriname outside of the capital.

A major challenge was organizing an effective hospital administration and recruiting and maintaining qualified personnel and medical specialists.

As part of the reorganization process, the hospital was granted greater autonomy and placed under the control of a special purpose nonprofit foundation.

A completion report written by Project Director Manodj Hindori in 2001 said the hospital had achieved the objectives of expanding medical service to the community by building up the qualified staff for basic medical specialties: internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology and anesthesiology. The report noted that nevertheless the hospital is “far from being the independent, fully autonomous organization” as originally envisaged.

The president of Suriname appoints the foundation’s seven-person board and the top three managerial positions at the hospital, and 85 percent of the hospital’s income is generated by government insurance and social safety net programs. The government controls hospital fees.

Nickerie Regional Hospital Director Rawien Changoer.

Rawien Changoer, the hospital director who led a recent reorganization of the hospital’s administration, says the reform “achieved 80 percent” of the objectives. He says further investments are needed to strengthen the hospital’s management and to implement a computerized financial and information system.

One tool Changoer says he lacks is “a laptop on my desk that will tell me how many patients are in the hospital at any one time.”

Harold L-Fo-Sjoe, the chief of surgery, says the hospital has recruited a sufficient number of physicians but faces a shortage of qualified nurses.

“When you are responsible for strengthening a hospital, you can never say you are satisfied,” he says. “There is always something more that needs to be done.”

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