Future Roles, Authorities, and Status of Sub-districtHeadmen and Village Headmen for Village Strengthening Development toward ASEAN Community

Abstract

The purpose was aimed to study the roles , authorities and status of village chief and village headman in developing the strength of villages to support ASEAN Community. The sampling groups consisted of 1,014 people divided into 8 different groups : 1. government officials, 2. local politicians, 3. teachers, 4. village chiefs and village headmen, vice village chief and village headmen, district medical personnel, village chief inspector, 5. Farmers 6. merchants and businessman, 7. Lancers, 8. Others. All were from represented upper northeast region of That Phanom district, NakornPhamonprovince, from central northeast region of Suwannabhum district, Roi-Et province, and from lower northeast region in Rasisalai district, Sisaket province. The sampling groups were cluster random sampling. The study tools applied were of three types; 1. The respondents of questionnaires on how they view their present village chief and village headman in terms of their roles and authority in three rating scales, high, moderate and low. 2. How much they expect their chief and headman to play the roles, high, moderate and little. 3. How much the respondents viewed the importance and necessity of their chiefs to remain in position, high, moderate and little. Furthermore, the respondents were asked to view what status of the future village chief and village headman should be like. The statistics employed in the analysis were means and standard
deviation. The appropriateness of roles , authority and status of the village chief and village headman were done in focus group. It was found that the overallrole of the village chief and village headman was in moderate level, much lower than expected. The village leaders’ overall role and duty was viewed as very important. 1) Roles : As far as role and duty were concerned, it was found that all aspects of the leaders’ performance was at moderate level, whereas the lower level was how they handle social and economic development. It was, hence, concluded that all results of the leaders’ performance had lower means compared to people’s expectation. People had high expectation on the role of their leaders in liaison with local administration organization, at the same time, people had put lower expectation on social and economic development. People viewed all aspects of the role and duty of their leaders at ” high “ level. People viewed the liaison with local administration organization as most crucial while least crucial was social and economic development. 2) Authority and duty: It was concluded that overall performance of the village leaders was at moderate level with means of 2.285, the same level as people’s expectation. People viewed the village leaders’ authority and duty as necessary at “ high “ level. When authority and duty were separately viewed, it was discovered that the result was at moderate level. In addition, the result with high level was village administration, however, the lowest was the registration. It was, therefore, concluded that the overall results had lower means than people expectation. People had high expectation in administration authority as people viewed each authority and duty as high. People viewed administration as very high. 3) Status: It was also found in the study that the suitable status of future village leaders were of the followings respectively; 1. As the leader or representative 2. Government official 3.Government employee 4. Politician 5. Volunteer 6. Local administration organization officer 7. Local administration organization employee.