Case studies on decentralization
Supported by the local government. Most financial support for running the anti- drug activities came from central government agencies and NGOs. One local leader reported that a group of residents submitted a proposal for anti- drug activities to the municipality as part of its annual plan, but it was rejected due to budget constraints. This incident discouraged the local people from participating in local government attempts to cut down on illegal drug use;
they preferred to receive support from other sources in order to run their own activities rather than collaborate with local government .lt was also found that NGOs did not take part in local government anti- drug campaigns; they reasoned that the budget allocated by the municipality for these activities was very small and unreliable, and incapable of having any meaningful impact.
While the success of measures to combat illegal drugs required public participation, the nature of the tasks discouraged involvement from local people. Most residents were reluctant to contribute actively because the substances were severe. For instance, the municipality was supposed to generate lists of drugs users and traders in its locality, but this was impossible without cooperation from local residents,
who declined to help because of fear of reprisals. Therefore, anti-drug activities were left to t authorities and citizens did not participate to any meaningful extent. The lack of public participation also led to problems of transparency and accountability .
In most cases, local communities had no information on details of anti-drug activities run by the municipalities. This was not only due to lack of willingness from the public to participate in this policy, but also reluctance of the municipalities to allow an open audit and evaluation of their performance Decentralizing the task of illegal drug control in this case clearly did not encourage more public participation, and consequently led to other problems related to responsiveness and accountability.