MPUMALANGA PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND LAND ADMINISTRATION

PUBLIC HEARING ON CONDITIONAL GRANTS AND CAPITAL EXPENDITURE 2006-2007

 

1.              Reporting

 

The Department has been reviewing, refining its reporting system and has finally come up with a model that is more workable, the details of the model are provided hereunder. 

 

Progress reports are prepared by responsible Projects Co-coordinators who are at implementation level (farm or village) and have day to day contact with the project implementation; they submit their reports to a municipal level for consolidation with other related projects if any in that municipality. This level of work is supervised by a Manager responsible for a particular municipality and that manager has since April 2006 been deployed to provide agricultural capacity in the municipality.  At a District municipality level the Department has a Senior Manager responsible for all agricultural projects and programmes who compiles a District level report. At a provincial level the Department has a General Manager responsible for provincial reports. The Office of the Head of Department has a dedicated unit for projects co-ordination that provides project management support to the entire system for better efficiency and effectiveness.

 

The Head of the Department has a bi-monthly management meeting where progress on projects and programmes gets discussion and reviewed. The Member of the Executive Council (MEC) has a quarterly performance review with all senior managers and programmme manager. 

 

The progress reports compiled by the Department are structured to reflect mainly two aspects, one technical which present progress and achievements, and other financial which details delivery in relation to budget allocation, during a particular period.

 

The progress report also provides valuable information with regards to itemized budget details, expenditure, on-going commitments,   and unspent balance for decision making.

 

The business plan is continuously reviewed and adjusted in accordance to needs after each review session that is linked to the monthly, quarterly reporting period.

 

2.              Monitoring and Evaluation

 

At Provincial level, regular technical backstopping and monthly field monitoring visits are conducted by technical staff, Extension Officers, Programme Co-ordinators, as well as staff members from Programme Management Component to ensured that there is adequate support and progress within the project.  The findings are reported in monthly/quarterly reports for action in the subsequent period.

 

The aim of the regular monitoring and evaluation visits is to:

·         Assess and evaluate the progress of the project in all its technical and financial aspects,

·         Identify problems and constrains encountered during implementation,

·         Identify solutions and propose a plan of action for further continuation and development of the project

 

3.              Challenges

 

·         Low expenditure on CASP for the first and second quarter of 2006/07 this was due to a design and planning that took place in the course of the two quarters whereas, ideally this should have happened a lot early in the previous financial year.  The Department acknowledges its lack of adequate foresight and its planning capacity limitations.  These challenges have been reported to the Executive Council and measures have been put in place to source capacity from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to address this challenge particularly at a level of infrastructure planning.  

 

·         The Department realized that its intervention programmes targeting poverty, rural infrastructure development, support to land reform, job creation and economic activities were not sufficient realizing the impact it was hoped they would realize. Part of the reason for this was fact that the intervention was thinly spread to make any significant impact.  The Department responded this challenge by refocusing all its projects that were targeting rural infrastructure, land reform, poverty and job creation so as to optimize impact. This has meant that conditional grant allocations were also refocused for maximum impact.

 

·         The first and second quarter of the financial year 2006/07 was utilized to re-plan some of the projects to try and optimize their impact on government priorities. The re-planning enabled the Department to identify risks to projects that would become white elephants on completion because of the lack of the supporting funds to acquire the requisite production inputs to take them to full productive use. The Department is now in a better planning position where consideration has been given to all aspects that make agricultural projects, whereby for instant if a poultry house is built a plan for stocking it with chickens is now in place to avoid the structure having to stand empty whilst beneficiaries are going without production inputs funding, this often lead to neglect and attract vandalism.    

 

·         All the infrastructure development projects had to be delayed in order to allow for refocusing to ensure that all infrastructure developed is put immediately to use to minimize vandalism that has been witnessed where there was a time lag between completion and use by the benefiting communities

 

·         After the repackaging Business Plans to optimize project impact the remaining challenge is that of project implementation monitoring capacity, which is being address by deploying extension officer on the ground to be the yes and hears of the Department. This may not be a perfect solution to the problems encountered but will be able to address some of the soft issues that do not require specialized expertise.  The current plans did not make budgetary provision to outsource project monitoring to professional such as engineers quantity surveyors. The plan for 2007/8, has made provision for this much needed service

 

Conclusion

 

The Department remains confident that most of its conditional grants and its capital projects will be completed within the current financial year, despite all the challenges listed in this note. The monitoring and control of service providers has been made more tighter and the turn around time for reporting any bridges on the signed contract has been improved by weekly reporting on progress on planned work schedules. The Department’s own turn around time for paying service providers has been improved to allow a shorter circle. The provincial Executive Council requests quarterly reports and explanation of any underperformance on conditional grants this an additional layer that seeks to ensure compliance with set conditions. Many of the projects implemented by the Department are of a duration of three months this provides confidence that it is possible to complete these projects before end of the financial year.

 

 

 

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MP MATHEBULA

ACTING HEAD OF DEPARTMENT