Demands for Local Government Transparency in Afghanistan

Spokespersons accused of failing to do their jobs.

Local government in Afghanistan need to urgently improve its media outreach so as to address public concerns about transparency, according to speakers at a series of IWPR debates.

Events in Balkh, Badakhshan and Daikondi provinces heard complaints that municipal spokespersons failed to keep people informed about local government's activities. This served to widen the gulf between officials and the community.

Nooragha Sharifi, the head of Nai Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan, an NGO, told a debate in Mazar-e Sharif in the northern Balkh province that government spokespersons put out unverified, inaccurate information.

"On one occasion some time ago, government spokesmen reported a suicide attack as being a gas canister explosion," he said.

Feruz Aysar, a civil society activist in Balkh, added that spokespersons were often "dependent on particular groups, whose interests they try to satisfy".

Speakers in Badakhshan, in the northeast, said the information vacuum around the role and function of local government was alienating people.

Imam Mohammad Saiye, a university lecturer in Badakhshan's administrative centre Faizabad, said the failure to share information could have bad consequences.

"When people aren't aware of what government is doing, they will form a negative view of it," he said.

Journalist Sediqi Lalzad said officials continued to avoid transparency.

"The local authorities are not aware of the media law or of the right of access to information, so they have no interest in sharing information with the media," he said.

Gul Mohammad Tanha, a journalist in Badakhshan, said this lack of transparency was the biggest challenge facing reporters in the province.

Ahmad Nawid Frotan, spokesman for provincial governor Shah Waliullah Adib, acknowledged that sharing information was a challenge.

"In the media office for Badakhshan province, there is only one post, the one I currently hold," Frotan said. "I am unable to gather routine information from the province's 28 districts so as to provide it to the media."

In Daikondi province in east-central Afghanistan, Mohammad Reza Wahidi, director of a private radio station called Nasim, said local governance was poor, and spokesmen did their best to keep a lid on negative information.

"The media never get told about important issues like the budget, accountability or corruption," he said.

Wahidi noted that reporters in Daikondi had to gather information from local people as it was impossible to check facts with the local government.

Sher Mohammad Entizar, speaking on behalf of NGOs in Daikondi, said this was the first time he had realised that provincial governor Abdul Haq Shafaq even had a spokesman. He had seen no news conferences or press releases from the spokesman's office in the last five years.

The governor's spokesman, Mohammad Anwar Qasimi, said he had been only spent seven days in his office in the last year, as he had been in dispute with his boss Sultan Ali Urozgani, who has since been replaced as governor.

"Since Urozgani, two other governors have come to Daikondi, but so far we haven't held a single press conference," Qasimi said, adding that he sent his daily reports to the president's office in Kabul, rather than sharing them with the public.