CITY COUNCIL AND UNDP DISCUSS COOPERATION

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Mongolia proposed to improve the outcome of UN Development Programme project ‘Strengthening Representative Bodies in Mongolia’ (SRBM) by providing capacity building training to public servants working in local Citizens’ Representative Khurals. The proposal was conveyed during a bilateral meeting between capital city authorities led by S.Amarsaikhan, Chairman of the Citizens’ Representative Khural of the capital city (City Council) and Daniela Gasparikova, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Mongolia on January 8. The SRBM was co-launched by the Government of Mongolia, the UNDP and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in 2017 to be implemented until 2020. Chairman S.Amarsaikhan appreciated the assistance of the UNDP and SDC in the development of local representative bodies in Mongolia, expressing the City Council’s intention to engage actively in the project. The Citizens’ Representative Khurals are local representative bodies, operating on district and capital city and aimag and soum levels. There are over 8,000 members working in Citizens’ Representative Khurals across the country. For her part, Deputy Resident Representative Gasparikova talked about how the 1992 adoption of Mongolia’s new Constitution laid the foundations for local self-governing bodies in administrative units, which have since made essential contribution to the democratic development of the country. “However, the Citizens’ Representative Khurals have nоt been developed into the ideal representative bodies representing and being responsible before the local people, and this is where the SRBM project comes in,” she said. An important priority of the project is capacity building of members of the Citizens’ Representative Khurals, in pursuit of which a workshop was organized among Chairmen of bag-level Citizens’ Khurals in Ulaanbaatar last year. (Soums are divided into bags, the smallest administrative units) The above mentioned proposal was made within this objective of the project. S.Munkhchuluun, Member of the City Council and Head of Policy Committee on Social Development explained, “Given how the members of the Citizens’ Representative Khurals are elected every four years, the project could yield better results if non-elected officials also receive capacity building training.” The Deputy Resident Representative gave a positive response to the idea, saying it would be conveyed to the project team. Kh.Aminaa