Overview

The Kabul City Initiative (KCI), begun in November 2010, provides technical and material support to the Kabul Municipality. The three-year project works in close partnership with Kabul’s mayor and municipal staff to enhance the capacities of Kabul Municipality’s administration and management functions.

KCI aims to provide effective, responsive service delivery through Kabul Municipality departments and offices, and to improve the long-term sustainability and financial viability of the Kabul Municipality. As a result of KCI’s activities, Kabul residents and business owners will share a renewed confidence in their local government’s ability to provide improved municipal services, understand the responsibilities of their municipal leaders, and will play an active role in the municipal decision-making process.

Activities

• Capacity Building: Work with the mayor and his administration to implement a Municipal Management and Capacity Building Improvement Plan, which includes standard operating procedures, and provide core public administration training to municipal line staff.
• Service Delivery: Rehabilitate and equip city offices and service centers and execute small-scale infrastructure improvements, such as parks, recreation facilities, roads, sidewalks, solid waste collection facilities, and street amenities.
• Revenue Collection and Financial Accountability: Work with the Kabul Municipality to improve accounting, budgeting, and financial management functions and improve the Land Tax Register.

Accomplishments

• Trained more than 6,802 permanent and contracted workers of Kabul Municipality in various technical areas, including engineering, project management, human resources, management, media, safety, financial management and budgeting, gender integration, IT and International Computer Driving License (ICDL) training.
• Conducted public education campaigns linking city services to revenue collection.
• Launched a public education campaign to clean and green Kabul. Distributed coloring and story books on garbage collection, tree planting and anti-littering to more than 150,000 school children throughout Kabul. Planted more than 5,000 tree saplings.
• Established the first-ever Women’s Council of female employees at the Kabul Municipality to promote gender mainstreaming in municipal policies and employment.
• Drafted 51 municipal policies, 48 Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), and 42 Department Terms of Reference for municipal reforms.
• Drafted a five-year Capital Improvement Plan for Kabul Municipality.
• Established a Citizen Information Center for Kabul Municipality.
• Installed Fiber Optic internet and cabling throughout the Kabul Municipality HQ to fully link the building to an internal network and the internet as well as trained the IT department in the operations and maintenance of the IT network.
• Constructed 12 neighborhood parks and more than 32 kilometers of city streets.
• Renovated buildings for 18 of the 22 municipal district offices.
• Established a new landfill composting facility.
• Installed an Afghan-developed computerized Financial Management Information System (FMIS) (compatible with the system used by the Ministry of Finance) and trained the budget staff in how to produce budgets and manage expenditures.
• Developed 23 White Papers on potential new revenue sources for the Kabul Municipality e.g. bottle recycling, municipality fund, and impact fees were just some of the topics covered in the White Papers