Public Roads Service Delivery and Governance: The Case of the Benishangul Gumuz Regional State Rural Roads Authority, Ethiopia

This paper aims at assessing the service delivery and governance system in the road agencies of the Benishangul Gumuz Regional State (BGRS). On one hand, most of the literatures and reports prepared both at national and regional levels claims, the road agencies are not performing as much they were supposed to do due to financial limitations. On the other hand, the country is allocating much budget for road network expansion which made road a number one financed sector in the nation. This contradiction clearly shows, there should be another way to look at the gaps which are hampering the performance of road agencies. That is, Governance problem. Accordingly, this paper examines the capacity and role of different actors and governance system is in place for the public road service delivery in the regional state. The research reveals that, while the private firms are playing a foremost role from among the non-state actors, the role of the public is still neglected. The ways through which platforms have been designed in different institutional setups and reform programs that invited the public to play its role are still lagging behind. The level of transparency is higher in the road agencies at higher level than those at lower administrative levels. The road agencies in the region are less responsive to the public demand. The main reason for this problem comprises of limitations in human resource capacity and political interferences in prioritization. Absence of appropriate voicing mechanisms and media coverage has highly affected the responsiveness to the public. On the other hand, there is no direct mechanism in which the road agencies become directly accountable to the road users. Similar to these, the major bottlenecks, the lower competency of the existed stuff in the regional road agencies and appropriateness to the position they hold as well as the unbalance of budget allocation for further specific topics in the agency (e.g. Between the maintenance and construction works, between the higher and lower level agencies) made the governance and the service delivery abound. These in turn have effect in obstructing the level of transparency, responsiveness, voicing, and accountability. However, for the better performance of the road agencies, building the capacity of the road agencies should not be the only solution. Rather, policies must adhere empowering the demand siders, the public, so that they can manage to uphold their voice and hold the service providers accountable to make the service a demand driven.