URBAN BASIC UTILITIES MANAGEMENT UNDER FRAGMENTED GOVERNANCE: AN ORATORY ON ITS CONTRIBUTION IN CITIES OF DEVELOPING WORLD

Governance of urban basic services/utilities i.e. water supply and sewerage, electricity, drainage, roads network etc.; forms the major part a city government’s functions since these consume highest portion of budgetary allocations and requires human resources support due to respective development and management nature. Effective, efficient and responsive management of these ultimately shapes the quality of an urban government. In pursuit, developing nations have been experimenting with a number of arrangements of which fragmented urban basic utilities/service governance emerged to be the majorly espoused one. Driven by the notions of Neoliberalism as well as insistence of international aid/doner agencies, such an adoption was expected to be suitable in all accounts of basic utilities governance. However, empirical evidences suggest that it has produced quite a number of governance convolutions. These include limited expansion capacity, limited autonomy of city governments in decision-making, stringent national government control, lack of public accountability, lack of coordination and cooperation between service providers, corruption etc. - thus, resulting to a high degree of inconveniences in urban living and loss of potentials in city economy. Commitment of city governments on better living, competitive business environment and sustainable economic growth are increasingly appearing to be distant possibilities under this arrangement. As a remedy, what is/are the potential/s of a general purpose metropolitan government with prerogatives to plan, develop, manage service provisions in the developing world? These have been examined in this paper.