The new Information and Suggestion Box of the Ministry of State Administration and Territorial Management (MSATM) was handed over today to 13 District and 65 Sub-District Administrators, on the occasion of the consultative meeting of the District Administrators with the MSATM in Dili. The initiative was supported by the joint UNCDF-UNDP Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP).

The Box, which will be placed at every District and Sub-District Office in the most visible and accessible area, will have the primary function to encourage feedback and participation at the community level, providing suggestions, proposals or complaints on topics such as the local development projects and procedures, local governance and decentralization process related activities. Moreover, the box has also been designed to facilitate the distribution of informative and civic education material produced by MSATM about local governance and decentralization, in the format of bulletins, posters, flyers, publications, Q & A and new regulations.

Community members including students, civil servants, civil society members or private sector representative will now have a different and unique tool to voice their concern in a direct and practical manner. The 13 District Administrators and the Sub-District Officers will be responsible to disseminate and receive the information contained in the boxes and to evaluate the feedback received from the community.

All the suggestions and inputs received will then be analyzed and discussed at the District Level, and every three months a Informative Report will be submitted to MSATM Communication Unit and to the different Directorates, with the final aim to produce a series of recommendations on how to better target and respond to the communities’ needs and queries.

Recommendations will include issues related to project planning and submission and procedures for LDP (Local Development Programme), DDP (Decentralized Development Package), and YDP (Youth Development Programme), access to information, modalities and channels of distribution, transparency and accountability of the regulations, and suggestions on the preparation of the establishment of the future municipalities.