The government should develop a policy for fair disbursement of funds to local government bodies and ensuring accountability in its financial management system, said experts yesterday.

Besides, there needs a comprehensive legal framework for coordinating the activities of different local government bodies -union parishad, municipalities, upazila parishad, city corporation and district councils, they viewed.

They came up with the proposals at the closing session of a two-day international seminar titled "Towards Effective, Accountable and Inclusive Local Government Institutions (LGIs): Learning from South Asia and Beyond”, organised by Local Government Division (LGD) at the Department of Public Health Engineering auditorium in Dhaka

yesterday.

The local government experts from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines participated in the seminar and shared their views and experience from their country perspectives, said a press release.

Their other recommendations include clarifying the status of the reserved seat members in upazila parishad, regular monitoring of ward shava (meeting) performance at union parishad level and arranging gender sensitive programmes for male representatives.

Local Government Division (LGD) Secretary Abdul Malek chaired the session while LGRD Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Switzerland's Ambassador to Bangladesh Christian Fotsch, UNDP Bangladesh Deputy Country Director Nick Beresford, among others, attended the function.