UNB, Chittagong :
This nationwide govt imitative falls far short of goal, says researcher Only one percent people seek services from Union Information and Services Centres (UISCs) in Chittagong though the government has set up these centres across the country, aiming to provide ‘one-stop’ public services to rural people, claims a study.
“Only one percent people of my studied area seek services. That means 99 percent people still don’t seek such services for many reasons,” Mohammad Sahid Ullah, Associate Professor at Chittagong University’s Communication and Journalism Department, told the agency sharing his study findings published in ‘Media Asia’, an international publication.
The researcher, also Research and Higher study fellow at the University of Queensland, mentioned that the study titled ‘Empowering rural communities through telecentre Connectivity: experience of the Union Information and Service Centres in Bangladesh’ concentrated on Chittagong only but his countrywide observation is also the same.
The government set up the 4,547 Union Information and Services Centres (UISCs) across the country in late 2010.
The researcher conducted study on four centres in Sitakund and Mirsarai and one of the centres is among the best at upazila level while there are some 194 UISCs in Chittagong.
The study reveals that community empowerment through UISC is a contested issue due to the overuse of ICT facilities by the emerging elite in contemporary rural Bangladesh – the youth and political cadre in this case.
Although the government has prioritised the rural poor, a number of factors make service delivery to rural communities a difficult proposition, the study says mentioning that the nationwide imitative falls far short of achieving its goal.
These include the existence of a rural hierarchy, lack of awareness about UISC activities and its facilities among ordinary people, poverty, and illiteracy resulting in reluctance to avail of government services.
Observations during the study found that rich people in rural areas have access to ICT facilities either at their homes or within their sub-districts while poor people and the illiterate, particularly women and the elderly ones, have fewer opportunities to access ICTs.
“I feel the government can provide subsidy to poor through deducting service fee for absolute poor for having service at either free or a very minimal cost,” said Sahid Ullah.
Asked whether the objective of having UISC remains largely unaddressed, the researcher said confusion over the UISC service still prevails among the common people, and thus people maintain distance from the UISC in many cases. “More campaign at local level could be helpful.”
When entrepreneurs are selected from within the same community the centre serves, their treatment to service seekers is often friendly and compassionate.
The findings and analysis of data from the field indicates that within a strong patron-client relationship, along with a socioeconomic and cultural environment with a ‘winner takes all’ political tradition, top-down ICT initiatives result in a confrontation between disempowerment and empowerment.
UISCs empower one group-elite, educated youths, and even party activists-at the expense of another – poor, aged, and women.
In such an atmosphere, UISCs do not function as a digital equalizer, but rather amplify the gaps between the rural power-poor and power-rich, the study reveals.
It says the inception of UISCs has not been a demand-driven initiative; rather the implementation has been driven by pressure from external development partners – namely UNDP and USAID, where maintaining funding and political power is a primary concern.
Most villagers are not adequately aware of the UISCs and their range of services, or cannot afford the services fees, and thus their actual engagement with these facilities is negligible.
It can be argued that the UISC functions as yet another ‘magic bullet’ within the neo-liberal Bangladeshi political economy of communication.
The consequences for the rural poor lie in the assumptions that UISCs are directly serving the rural poor, ultimately compromising the Bangladeshi government’s public welfare vision.
Finally, the study findings suggest, UISCs have only been operating for a few years and there is a growing need for comprehensive research on their impacts and benefits, particularly within the marginalised groups they aim to target.
