Directors of finance in all government ministries have been warned of stern action if they continue to give money to officers who do not provide monitoring and evaluation reports after inspecting projects. And Acting Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa says the upgrade of the management monitoring system and the investments in technology that Government has undertaken are aimed at helping it save financial resources. He said this during an orientation workshop for permanent secretaries on the upgraded management monitoring system yesterday.

“The full actualisation of the benefits of the system will only happen if there is a shift in mindset and embracing technology as a tool to making work easier, efficient and as a means for strengthening transparency and accountability,” Mr Kangwa said. He said the new system will simplify reporting both in terms of cluster reporting under the Seventh National Development Plan, as well as reporting of progress on government programmes and projects by ministers to the President.

Mr Kangwa said finance directors in government ministries release funds to officers to conduct monitoring and evaluation activities but that they do not provide feedback on these projects through reports. He said there is need for officers to provide these reports to further reduce audit queries on unretired imprest, which was the largest query in government ministries.

Meanwhile, Ministry of National Development Planning Permanent Secretary for development cooperation, monitoring and evaluation Mushuma Mulenga said all ministries use financial resources to conduct monitoring and evaluation.

Mr Mulenga said this entails that ministries have the capacity to provide monitoring and evaluation reports but that they do not do that because they do not keep their data properly. “We have seen an approach where ministries want to use only 20 percent of data, but providing reports using incomplete data is regarded as non-performance,” he said.