Govt disburses K3.8bil in grants for provinces

THE government is currently disbursing the remaining K3.8 billion in provincial and district support grants (PSG and DSG) or constitutional grants to provinces and districts.
The Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD), responsible for facilitating and coordinating service improvement programme (PSIP and DSIP) and constitutional grants (PSG/DSG) is releasing K38,750,000 for an emergency and awareness campaign to fight and contain Covid-19 pandemic.
The available funds were the outstanding 2019 provincial and district support grants (PSG/DSG).
DIRD secretary Aihi Vaki said it was a call by the Government to every department to assist in any way possible.
Therefore, the grants were released due to the state of emergency.
It is important to assist the provinces and district administrations in their preparedness.
He advised the administrations that the grants were to be expended on public awareness campaign on the Covid-19 pandemic, purchasing of essential health approved medical testing kits.
He also advised against paying allowances for doctors and nurses, reimbursement of use of personal assets which would be against the administrative guidelines and financial instructions.
He however advised that the application of these grants was subject to joint provincial planning and budget priorities committee (JPP & BPC) and district development authority (DDA) decisions except the discretionary component.
The committee needed to approve the expenditure of the grants.