Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) project is rolling into implementation. The targeted 28 Local Authorities (LAs) appear ready to meet the Minimal Access Conditions (MACs) for accessing the US$100 million funding.
GESD project coordinator Charles Chunga said, ‘with the funding comes major projects in the districts such as improved and quality water supply, modern school blocks and qualified teaching staff, improved road infrastructure among others. It even means more transparency and accountability in the LA’s through a vibrant citizen engagement model’.
Chunga said GESD which is implemented under the Performance-Based Grant (PBG) conditions, means funding is determined by how LA’s perform while meeting the MACs. The LAs will be scanned through Local Authority Performance Assessment (LAPA) - a tool for assessing their performance to determine if they are ready to access funding.
‘The LAPA tool, among others, helps determine whether LAs have basic capacities/safeguards to manage development grants - to ensure that good performers are rewarded, and bad performers helped to achieve an acceptable capacity level to access resources,’ Chunga said.
The idea is to make sure that LAs access the funding. Therefore, another tool – the Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) which is a process for preparing the LAs using developed or refined guidelines and systems to support them address any identified blockages that might deny them access the funding has been developed. The GESD project wants all LAs to improve their performance and meet the MACs.
For example, during preparation of inventory of incomplete projects resourced by the District Development Fund (DDF) – it was established that a number of investment projects in district LAs are incomplete. Therefore, before starting on completely new investments, uncompleted projects will have to be completed and made functional first. This is not negotiable.
The process requires that the PIP tool rolls into action to drill the LAs. Targeted key areas to prepare LAs include planning and budgeting for completion of the unfinished investments. This will equip councils with skills of developing and approving Annual Investment Plans (AIPs).
