Assessing The Enforcement of Principles of Good Governance In Amhara National Regional State: The Case of Debre Tabor Town Urban Development and Houses Construction Department

Abstract

The term good governance was first used in the 1990s by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to describe how public organizations best conduct public affairs and deliver public goods and services. The role of good governance to ensure equity resource distribution among the society, wise utilization of financial and non-financial materials, accelerating development progress, productivity, and so on without doubt obviously testified by countries, individuals, intentional financial institutions. The study dealt with assessing the enforcement of principles of good governance in Amhara national regional state: the case of Debre tabor town urban development and houses construction department. The study was conducted using 102 service users’ and 25 employees’ response of open and close ended questionnaires that were selected via random sampling technique. Furthermore, focused group discussion, interview and secondary data were used to gather relevant data, and rely on more descriptive and some form of explanatory research methods. Findings of the study reveals that the performance of the department pertaining to the principles of good governance was found dissatisfactory and much is left to be done in the department. The leading factors that inhibited the performance of good governance in the department were, among others, weak enforcement procedure, corruption, some employees disrespect of service users, weak public education, weak monitoring and evaluation system, administrative and technical incompetence of employees, and absence of public review system. Accordingly, to enhance good land governance and administration system in the department, it should be strive on addressing the above bottleneck through effective enforcement procedures.