Quarterly Report
Introduction
CSPR in the Province has since the
beginning of this year been actively involved in all poverty related
activities in the Province. One most critical observation made in
the Province is that most
of the projects that are under the poverty
reduction programs (PRP) have not been effectively implemented. This
has made the CSPR network in the province to up hold our theme for
this year of “Ranking poverty eradication programs first for
Zambia”. The major activities that have been done in the first quarter fall under
the following headings:
Capacity building
Information
dissemination
Rapid poverty Assessment
surveys
Lobby and advocacy
Budget and Expenditure
tracking
Capacity Building
In the beginning of the year, the
provincial focal group saw the need of building the capacities of all the NGOs and CBOs in the province if we are to achieve the goals
and vision of the network.
This programme has commenced by starting
to build the capacities of the network members based in Solwezi. To
achieve this, four workshop were conducted in Solwezi under the
following subjects:
Member NGO sensitisation workshop on
who civil society for poverty reduction is and it’s objective.
This was a
one-day workshop that was conducted within Solwezi. It targeted all
NGO and CBOs based in Solwezi who are working around fighting
poverty in the community. This workshop
was an eye opener to NGOs
and CBOs around Solwezi on the PRSP and the role of civil society organisations in Ranking Poverty Reduction Programmes first for
Zambia. The workshop also has helped NGOs in Solwezi in seeing the
importance of networking and the power in it.
One member from the
steering committee and one from secretariat conducted the other
similar capacity building activity done in the province. NGOs within Solwezi were meet a lot of activities were conducted to see how
close each organisation was to CSPR according to their call business
as an organisation. Role clarification was also done at the same
meeting. The helped all NGOs to have a sense of ownership over CSPR.
During this same meeting a radio programme was done in Kikaonde,
which discussed the role of CSPR in relation to the PRSP. This
programme was aired on radio one of ZNBC because the province has no
radio station. This programme helped in making CSPR known to all the
comers of the Province and information on the PRSP was disseminated
to the members of the province. More radio programmes in the local
language need to be done.
Training
workshop in PRA tools
The other capacity building workshop
conducted was on equipping network member in the Province on the use
of the Participatory Rapid Assessment Tools (PRA tools). This was a
two days workshop, where the first day was the training on the use
of the PRA tool in poverty monitoring and the next day was a
practical day of using the PRA tools. This workshop has helped all
the network members in the Province to be equiped with the tools
that they have adopted for use in their NGOs as they work on poverty
issues.
Training
in budget and expenditure tracking
The budget and expenditure training
workshop is one of the capacity building work which was done in the
province with the support in man power by a member of the national
steering committee and provincial focal group. The training has
helped the NGOs in Solwezi to monitor and track the disbursements of
the budgetary allocations more especially those that are meant for
developmental projects that are shown in the yellow book.
We have
started by monitoring projects under health and so far Kichikwe and
the ZEN school have been our first targets where we have been. This training has proved to be very helpful because it has made the
implementers of the projects to be more serious because they know
that the community is also following up. As provincial focal group,
we fill that this training be extended to all the districts if we
are to succeed in the fight of ranking poverty eradication first for
Zambia.
Training in financial Management.
The finance manager from secretariat
conducted this training in the province. The training was aimed at
equipping the Provincial Focal Group in financial Management. The
training has really helped the focal group to function effectively
because the financial guidelines have been made clearer. The
training has also help member organisations to be equipped in the basic financial management skills. It has also helped the team to
know how and when to prepare the financial report.
Information
Dissemination
This
is an on going programme. We have been distributing information on
the PRSP and explaining it in the
simpler version. We have taken advantage of the many traditional
ceremonies in the province to distribute our brushers and the letter
of intent.
We had also a one-day meeting in discussing the letter of
intent and its impact on the economy. Information is power and we
would suggest that another radio programme be initiated on radio one
because as a province we have no radio station. People liked that programme which was done in Kikaonde.
There is also need for the
yellow book to be availed to the Focal group. This is one document
we are encouraging the citizens to read through for them to know
what is budgeted for their
districts.
Rapid Poverty Assessment Survey
Two
rapid assessments in poverty have been done in the province. The
first one is our usual assessment
done in Mwinilunga district that is aimed at monitoring the implementation of the Poverty reduction strategy paper. The outcomes
in the Mwinilunga survey are not very different from the first
assessment apart from a few changes in the education and health
sectors.
The other poverty assessment done is on the women in
small-scale mining.
This exercise was done in Solwezi district where
most of the mining activities are being done in the province. It was
aimed at looking at the livelihood of the women involved in
small-scale mining. Small-scale mining is one of the outlined
activities in the PRSP.
This kind of mining is mostly in gemstone.
From our assessment it was seen that the women in small-scale mining
are better in terms of livelihood that those in agriculture
activities.
The only problem we have seen is that there is no much
support from government in terms of loans to the people involved in
small-scale mining. Most of these miners are doing the mining
illegally because of difficulties in obtaining the license. This is
also making government to loose a lot of revenue. The sector has
high potential in poverty reduction.
Budget and Expenditure Tracking
This
activity started after the training in budgeting and expenditure
tracking. The two projects we
have followed so far are both under health. The construction of Kichikwe clinic as outlined in the yellow book, and the construction
of ZEN school which is a HIPC project.
The work at the ZEN school in Solwezi is progressing well.
There is nothing done so far on Kichikwe clinic on the part of government apart from the bricks which are on the site made by the community. The claims by the
permanent secretary as to why the project has not started are that
Ministry of Finance National Planning has not released the funds for
clinic.
Lobby and Advocacy.
The
lobby and advocacy programme has started on the delays in the
disbursements of the moneys meant for PRP. We have started with Kichikwe where the former Permanent
Secretary announced that the Province had K400million for the
construction of the clinic, but so far nothing has been done on the
site by implementers. When we made a follow-up, the new Permanent
Secretary was saying there was no money meant for the Kichikwe
Clinic. We have met the community and what is remaining is to do the
literature review so that we have the fact about the project. We
would need a lot of support from secretariat in literature review
for us to come up with facts.
Conclusion
To sum up we are saying that much has
been done though the impact is not much, because all the activities
mentioned above have been done only in two districts precisely Solwezi and Mwinilunga.
We recommend that in the next quarter more
of these activities should spill over to other districts either by
having a provincial workshop that can bring NGOs in the province
together or district ones. The will help us equip them in budget and
expenditure tracking skills which have proved to be a very important
tool to use in making implementers of PRP projects work extra hard.
Budget tracking and information dissemination are one of the
activities, which need to be done in all the districts if the impact
of our activities is to be felt. |
