A case study taken from Oxfam's 2005 Programme Impact Report

Oxfam’s partner in Zugdidi, the Association of Disabled Women and Mothers of Disabled Children (ADW), is supporting four local communities to become involved in monitoring the Zugdidi budget. An 18-year-old woman member of the local budget-monitoring group in Tsaishi village says: ‘Gradually, my interest in budgetary processes grew, and I have started discussing our local budget with my peers. This obsession looked weird for someone my age. In the beginning, my counterparts and friends were not interested, but now I have involved them so much that they themselves ask questions about the local and national budget. I am very proud.’

There are 30 villages in Zugdidi region, and under this budget-monitoring project the 30 representatives of ‘local self-governance’ in the region have been trained in the relevant budgetary processes, the new Tax Code system, and project writing and fundraising. All 30 local self-governance representatives are men, which reflects the male-dominated political culture of the country. Village members said during the assessment of this project that they would like to see more women leaders in their communities. However, a 46-year-old woman commented: ‘Women’s pockets cannot endure elections’. The project has ensured that women and men are equally represented in the village budget-monitoring groups.

Throughout the project the communities have not only learned about their local budgets, but have monitored their implementation and have taken part in drafting the 2005 budgets for their villages, together with the elected local self-governance representative. Quarterly bulletins have been published and monthly radio talks broadcast, dedicated to the budgetary processes. This has contributed significantly to successful lobbying for amendments to the budget of the city of Zugdidi. Unspent budget lines (for the Regional Museum of Tea and the Teachers’ Vocational Institute, for example), which create opportunities for money laundering and corruption, have been transferred to education and other social expenditures.

However, the regional government has not yet approved the budgets drawn up with involvement of the community budget-monitoring groups, so local people are feeling that central government does not really support decentralisation and strong involvement of local communities in budgetary processes.

The cost of this project has been £13,500. Two hundred people have been directly involved, and government services in the Sugdidi region cover the population of about 80,000.