Therole Of Local Government For Community Development: Evidencefrom Holeta Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Local government is the lowest level of administrational structure to manage and provide the necessary facilities to the residents. The importance of the local government depends on the closer relationship they create with people. The establishment of local government has two purposes: for administrative purpose and for determining specific local public needs and then acting accordingly was the second purpose. The local governors communicate the local inhabitants and act as a link between the community and the government. Similar to other local governments identified in the literature there is grievance to the local governance of Holeta town administrators for their ineffectiveness in community development. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the engagement of the local inhabitants in the initiatives delivered by local government to the community development. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative; closed ended questionnaires and face-to-face semi structured interview to gather the relevant data. The study was conducted on randomly sampled 146 house holders using simple random formula or Slovin from three selected kebeles (smallest units of local governments in Ethiopia) of Holeta town administration. From this sample of the population, 18 of them were also interviewed. The quantitative results were analyzed using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 25.0, which made it possible to cord the responses for descriptive statistics. The qualitative data were analyzed with thematic method. Finally, though the study result shows that the community better participated in health services; the study as general concluded that the local government should do powerfully to enhance the participation of the local inhabitants in community development from the perspective of social, environmental, cultural and even including the health services