Five-year development plan

I SHARE my view on how the 5-year development plan is being done.
Congratulations to all MPs and their districts for doing a good job in launching their development plans.
That is and has always been the way to go for district improvement programmes and projects.
However, what am trying to share now is whether those plans represent the district administration public servants or the local community members?
The district administration public servant plan which I am referring to is the plan that is only done by people in the office.
Some public servants go patrolling and see the communities need but is it really the peoples need?
For example, an agriculture officer may go out and tell people that your land is good for cattle when in reality the land may be good for cash crop farming.
How the cattle came to be included in the plan is a question. Does it speak for the people or a new introduction of trial and error which will not be sustainable but costly for unwise spending?
The local community plans are community based plans where all the village members sit down together with their ward members (councillors) and district administration public servants to come up with their project plan.
That plan is done and agreed by all local community members and not the ward member (councillor) alone or the district officer alone. It should be done and agreed by all parties.
The community members, ward member (councillor) and district officers before endorsing it as a plan.
The previous and current trend with 5-year development plan being done is that we are using the top down planning approach where planning is just made at the top level where only a minority benefit from it.
Some community ward areas benefit while others not because it does not really represent the people.
The projects they set last only for a short term.
A good 5-year development plan must be done bottom up and represents the real individual community needs.
These plans are done by the people and the people will then take ownership in looking after it and finding ways to improve it when there is plan for expansion or refurbishing when the government short fall in supporting.
The system of developing a proper 5-year development plan has been hijacked using the top down planning approach.
For those LLG/ districts who have done the bottom-up approach, I congratulate you for that.
For those who have not and have developed and launch their plans already, I am appealing to you to review your plans and follow the bottom up approach.
This will be a very expensive exercise but to be honest, I don’t see districts having an individual documented five year ward development file to support how their LLG/district plan is derived from and really represents the people’s project.

Francis Saliau