Assessing The Impacts Of Fiscal And Human Resource Autonomy On Service Delivery In Tanzania: A Case Of The City Council Of Dodoma

ABSTRACT

This study is about Assessing the Impacts of Fiscal and Human Resource Autonomy on Service Delivery in Tanzania: The Case of City Council of Dodoma. The central problem of the study was that despite various decentralisation initiatives in Tanzania for the past five decades, lack of adequate fiscal and human resources autonomy has continued to be problematic in enhancing service delivery. Accordingly, the study used a mixed-method approach where both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The Principal Agency Theory (PAT) guided the collection and analysis of findings.

The findings show that there has been decreasing fiscal and human resources autonomy for service delivery in the City Council of Dodoma (CCD). The findings are consistent with the existing body of literature on decentralization and service delivery in Tanzania which as indicated in the analysis and discussion sections, there is the lack for adequate powers in financial and key human resources functional areas which has impacted on the quality, access, and timeliness of local service delivery.

The findings reveal further that the level of local citizen satisfaction with service delivery is influenced by several factors such as perceptions on the level of understanding about the decentralization and devolution, relative powers possessed by the council officials, uneven access to services, provision of substandard services and poor infrastructure. The findings and discussion of fiscal and human resources at this point is because many local government authorities in Tanzania and elsewhere in developing countries are facing similar limited fiscal and human resources powers for service delivery.

The study concludes that there is substantial knowledge on the part of council officials and local citizens on D by D but the other hand, human resources powers substantially limiting the adequate provision of social services in terms of their availability, affordability, accessibility, and timelines. It is also concluded that there threatening trends to the D by D spirit characterized re-concentration of strategic fiscal resources at the level of the central government, inadequate alignment and coordination of strategic priorities and actions between the central and local government levels, re-centralization of important recruitment and other human

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resources management decisions, and re-centralization of disciplinary authority for senor local government officials at the Central government level. The study recommends the following: i) the need for renewed enlightening of central government leaders and officials of the value of D by D and how to implement it more effectively in the current context of national development agendas; b) significant changes in central-local government relations in terms of the regulations and directives related to human resources and fiscal powers; and c) the Local Government Policy Paper (1998) should be revised to allow insertion of some specific sections on fiscal and human resource powers that will also be enhanced by enacting laws that define the powers of the council versus the central government.