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.
___________________________
MP MATHEBULA
ACTING HEAD OF DEPARTMENT