For those who work in development field: Who never went through this situation, raise your arm? My experience in Mozambique in this issue is very rich!! The Mozambican government decided to increase the per diem amount for the civil servants – I think it was in 2007. Today, a civil servant received, for a working day out of their office, half of his salary. This makes any sense?!
I think we should balance things. The civil servants, local communities, etc, should receive for the additional cost of leaving their houses (accommodation, food and transport). What I can’t understand is that people refuse to participate in trainings just because you can’t pay extra expenditures.
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"This paper is intended to spark debate on the use of per diems, particularly as compensation for community members to participate in development initiatives, but also more broadly as compensation for development organization employees. Like all controversial topics, there are many points of view. We encourage your participation in this debate.
In 2008, I was working for an international non-governmental organization (INGO) in Ethiopia. I remember going to the field to carry out an evaluation exercise with a local NGO and a few community groups that were testing an Asset-based Community Development approach. In principle, our stance was that if initiatives were truly citizen-led and community-driven, then people should not expect to be paid per diems for volunteering to participate in a task they had initially defined and designed themselves, and therefore presumably considered important. In the case of this evaluation exercise, the idea was that it was participatory and the results would assist in the group’s decision-making about how to move forward."
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE by Brianne Peters
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