Al-Maghazi Municipality holds a hearing session with a senior official during a training on social accountability
Middle governorate, Publication and Information Unit:
The follow-up committee at Al-Maghazi Municipality in the Middle governorate held a hearing session with the municipality's water network supervision officer, Younis Al-Dabbaka, in the presence of the mayor, Mohammed Al-Najjar, the municipality's director, Omar Maghari, and a number of municipal council members, in order to give explanations about the water crisis the area has been suffering from recently and to answer the committee members' questions.
The hearing session took place during a training on the concept of social accountability delivered by the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution for the municipality's staff at its premises at the end of last week, within the project on social accountability in local government, carried out in partnership with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) under the Local Governance and Civil Society Development Programme (LGP).
On the nature of the training, the coordinator of the social accountability in local government project at the Palestinian Center for Conflict Resolution, Raed Abu Saada, explained that building the capacities of the follow-up committee's members is the training's main aim, as representatives of the local community, so that they become familiar with the concept of social accountability and its tools, adding: "The follow-up committee's responsibility today lies in achieving social accountability through active participation in the decisions the municipality takes and in following up how far the municipality responds to citizens' needs and complaints."
Abu Saada said: "The hearing sessions in the second day's training helped the trainees from the municipality's staff become familiar with the skills and methods of running hearing sessions, as one of the main tools of social accountability," noting that citizens look to the municipality's performance being developed so that it responds to their problems and resolves them quickly, and to developing the services and community means that help develop the relationship between municipalities and the citizen.
