was 990,823. The number of children in the PAN program was 68,870-7% of the potentially eligible population. The reason for PAN’s low nationwide coverage are the following: (i) there exists a high number of children under six in a risk situation; (ii) delivery of services is expensive because of the integral nature of childcare and the lack of suitable infrastructure and equipment; and (iii) there is a lack of counterpart funds on the part of Prefecturas and municipal governments. 2.42
2.43
This PAN program also demonstrates that programs should be decentralized to the level where funding and responsibility exists, rather than to a level with no immediate authority, or to a level without the institutional strength to implement activities.. For instance, although PAN’s initial design included NGOs and community organizations as the main operators of the program, experience showed that municipal governments were more suited to the task. There are several reasons for this: (i)
under the current participatory planning process, communities prioritize their needs, demand services from their municipal governments and control budget expenditure;
(ii)
municipal governments are able to operate the program’s services in a less costly manner than NGOs due to lower overhead and variable costs; and
(iii)
the program’s sustainability increases because municipal governments who have participated in the program recognize its importance for their communities and show their willingness to increase their counterpart financing after the first year of participation.
However, the PAN program also must work with the Prefecturas, which are currently the weaker part of the chain in Bolivia’s decentralization process, which began with the approval of the Popular Participation Law in 1994 and the Administrative Decentralization Law in 1995. The Prefecto, the main political officer, is hand-picked by the Bolivian President and usually belongs to one of the political parties of the governing coalition. Since he is not elected by popular vote, he and his team may be replaced at any time. This is the context within which PAN operates in terms of the Prefectura and the Prefecto, who is head of PAN’s Departmental Committee. In spite of this, PAN must negotiate with the Prefectura every year to obtain counterpart financing for personnel fees and administrative and maintenance and operation expenses.25
25
At present, all Prefecturas, except for Oruro, have signed an agreement with PAN. Furthermore, in order for the program to be sustainable in the medium and long term, the Prefecturas are expected to gradually begin co-executing it (supervision, training and regulation) between 2001 and 2003 and to execute the integral childcare model on their own from 2004 onwards. In order to attain this far-reaching goal, the program will have to convince the Prefecturas that the integral childcare model is an essential part of its social policy. The first step is to reactivate the Departmental and Municipal Committees, which have not been meeting regularly. A second step would be to carry out technical activities such as training of facilitators and community educators and monitoring and evaluation with technicians from both institutions. A third step would be to involve the Prefecturas in important activities carried out by PAN such as negotiation with municipal governments, inauguration of centers, supervision of quality of services, etc. These activities impose a considerable institutional burden on the project
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