NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
An Analysis Of JICA's Salary Supplementation Regulations On Best Practice
By Mitsuko Maeda, Osaka Jogakuin College, Osaka, Japan
KeywordsSalary supplementation, Counterpart, Donor agency regulations, JICA, Best practice
Summary
This article assesses JICA?s regulations that disallow the Agency from providing salary supplements to local counterparts. While JICA believes that the regulations are a necessity of good practice, in actuality the implementation of such regulations may have serious limitations and difficulties.
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The provision of donor-funded salary supplementation for selected civil servants is a common practice in many development projects. The practice is necessary to obtain commitments from local project personnel, who in general are not paid enough by their government. However, both donors and recipient governments have recognised that the practice of donor-funded salary supplementation is something of a double-edged sword. A major negative consequence is that the practice is perceived to be not sustainable. It has been criticised that salary supplementation leads to a number of problems such as undesirable competition among donors, distortion of development work, corruption, abuse of the process, and brain drain. It is generally believed that these problems may even threaten the ownership of the project by the recipient government.
For these reasons, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has established strict rules that forbid providing salary supplementation for recipient government staff. Japan?s aid philosophy has emphasised the importance of assisting self-help efforts of recipient countries. Long before ?Ownership of Recipients? became a buzz-word among donors in the 1990s, Japan had already realised this philosophy?s importance based on its own successful experience of economic development (Nishigaki & Shimomura, 1999, p.145-155). Such realisation resulted in concrete actions to demonstrate Japan?s aid philosophy of ?assisting self-help efforts of recipients?, and one of these actions was the establishment of JICA regulations that forbid giving salary supplementations to local counterparts.
JICA seems to be highly proud of the agency regulations, believing that they can generate good practice. For example, JICA views the science and mathematics teacher training project in Kenya as a successful project. In this project, JICA did not provide financial incentives to counterparts and workshop participants, even though they were used to getting financial allowances provided by other donors. The Teacher Training Workshops were conducted without the consideration of monetary incentives to participants. This approach was considered as sustainable even after the project was terminated. JICA often introduces the experience of such a project as being ?good practice?, as it appears that the approach had encouraged self-help efforts of recipients and had taken sustainability of project activities into consideration.
However, in reality, many JICA?s projects encountered difficulty in compliance with these regulations and resulted in JICA?s inability to generate good practice. This observation is supported by evidence as delineated in the following:
First, JICA has been struggling to find non-financial incentives, as alternatives to salary supplementation. In many cases, JICA uses the opportunity of counterpart training in Japan as one of those alternative incentives. However, some counterparts do not regard the purpose of training in Japan as capacity development per se. Therefore, during their stay in Japan, they are keen on accumulating JICA-provided daily allowance, which is sometimes equivalent to one month salary provided by their government. In some cases, instead of working diligently, some even spend their time busy shopping for budget cars, computers, and electric appliances, which are not easily obtainable in their home countries. As such motives are human nature, how can JICA claim that providing counterpart training in Japan is not associated with financial incentives? Also, although JICA is not permitted to provide salary supplementation to their counterparts, JICA is allowed to give out other forms of payments, such as staff training fees and travel allowances, to counterparts. How can the counterparts distinguish these payments from salary supplementation? Although all these varieties of payment forms are specific terms in JICA?s accounting books, from the point of view of the counterparts, they all represent monetary incentives, no different than if the money were from salary supplementation.
Second, JICA?s regulations about denial of salary supplementation would ironically threaten the sustainability of the project activities. Under the situation where many other donors provide salary supplementation to their counterparts, JICA?s regulations may actually discourage their counterparts from committing themselves to project activities. In JICA?s irrigation project in Ghana, the counterparts felt that JICA?s rule was too strict, compared to other donors who often provided monetary incentives. Consequently, some counterparts sought to be transferred to other organisations for better salaries. The loss of these trained counterpart personnel not only negatively influenced the efficiency and effectiveness of the project activities but also threatened sustainability in the post-project era (Miyoshi & Nagayo, 2005).
Third, JICA?s salary supplementation regulations may not help in raising the ownership of recipient governments. While it is said that salary supplementation practice may run the risk to threaten ownership in government, actual research has demonstrated that this may not be always the case. In Cambodia, for instance, higher ownership can be found in government departments which were well-resourced by donors through salary supplementation and other operational assistance. Such a desirable situation tended to raise capacity and ownership, compared with those poorly funded departments with few resources (Hubbard, 2005). This cause-and-effect phenomenon points to the fact that providing salary supplementation may actually help the recipient government to have higher ownership.
Fourth, JICA?s regulations on salary supplementation do not comply with donor-coordination. With the introduction of Sector-wide approaches (SWAps), harmonisation of salary supplements becomes an important agenda among donors in many countries. While civil service pay reform is being implemented to increase the wages of counterparts, as a transitional measure many donors call for salary-topping-up schemes through donor budget support or setting a ceiling on the amount. They attempt to establish unified approaches to salary supplementation issues (UNDP, 2005). Such attempts have often been introduced as ?good practice? by many other donors (see, DANIDA, 2004). When the practice of salary supplementation is being justified and coordinated among many donors, how can JICA keep insisting on denying salary supplementation?
Thus, JICA?s regulations that forbid salary supplementation would in reality suffer from limitations and difficulties in their implementation. Under these circumstances, the rigidity of donor agency regulations would not necessarily generate an intended good practice, and it may even be counterproductive. Perhaps JICA should not be so over-confident of its own regulations. JICA may be wise to explore other better approaches to refine the salary supplement issues so that it can realise Japan?s aid philosophy about ?assisting self-help efforts?, and help to achieve best practice.
References
DANIDA (Danish International Development Agency) (2004). Rationalizing Donor Salary Supplementation Practices in the Context of Pay and Employment Reform. Phnom Penh: DANIDA.
Hubbard, Michael (2005). Aid Management in Cambodia: Breaking out of a Low Ownership Trap. Public Administration and Development, 25 (5), 409-414.
Miyoshi, Takahiro & Nagayo, Hidenari (2005). The Analysis on the Effectiveness and Issues About JICA's Technical Assistance from the Perspective of Capacity Development: The Case Study of Ghana Irrigated Agriculture Promotion Assistance. (in Japanese.)
Nishigaki, Akira & Shimomura, Yasutami (1999). The Economics of Development Assistance: Japan's ODA in a Symbiotic World. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2005). Salary Supplementation Schemes: A Critical Ingredient to Implementing Reform (Human Development Viewpoint).
Further reading
Godfrey, Martin; Chan, Sophal; Kato, Toshiyasu; Long, Vou Piseth; Pon, Dorina; Tep, Saravy; Tia, Savona & So, Sovannarith (2002). Technical Assistance and Capacity Development in an Aid-Dependent Economy: The Experience in Cambodia. World Development, 30 (3), 355-373.
Maeda, Mitsuko (2007). Power Relations among Actors in Development Cooperation: Patterns, Concepts and Approaches in a Japanese-Assisted Teacher Training Project in Cambodia. PhD thesis. The University of Hong Kong.
Siddiqui, Farid; Strickler, Carol & Vinde, Pierre (2004). Capacity Building Practices of Cambodia's Development Partners Results of a Survey. Phnom Penh: Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) & Cambodian Rehabilitation and Development Board (CRDB).
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