Department to monitor projects in districts

THE Government will be closely monitoring project implementations in the districts, according to Department of Implementation and Rural Development (Dird) acting secretary Aihi Vaki.
A percentage of the district services improvement programme funding would be used for the monitoring of the projects.
“In previous years, we would only assess implementation of projects from the reports brought to us by the district officers without physically seeing for ourselves and verifying the reports,” Vaki said.
“And so in many instances, some project implementation reports were being fabricated just to impress us but the actual works were never done.
“That is why the National Executive Council has approved the allocation of 1 per cent of every million kina from the 111 districts for interagency monitoring.”
Those to be involved in the monitoring of projects include the Dird plus the departments of Finance, National Planning and Monitoring, Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs and the Prime Minister’s.
“Even the K10,000 (1 per cent of district funding) is not sufficient. The average cost of going to each district is K100,000,” Vaki said.
The Finance Department is expected to release K111 million to the 111 districts for this year’s funding.
According to Vaki, when he was acting deputy secretary in 2017, there was a steep decline in the submission of annual reports and acquittals for DSIP and PSIP funding over the past four years.
“In 2013, we had 92 acquittals submitted and 19 not submitted. In 2014, 75 submitted and 36 not. In 2015 we had 36 submitted and 75 not submitted and this year (2017) we have only received five so far. So you can now see the trend is that over this period, the level of reporting is dropping,” he said at the time.
“Although we have seen some developments, concerns are still there about how projects are delivered.”