Joint monitoring to improve NGO performance in Phalombe

Phalombe District Council on Thursday introduced a joint monitoring and supervision system on non-governmental organizations’ projects in the district aimed at providing checks and balances.

According to Director of Planning and Development for Phalombe, Morson Magombo, this is in a bid to curb project funds mismanagement and promote good performance in organizations operating in the district.

Speaking in an interview, Magombo said the District Council has a mandate of ensuring that all NGOs serving people in the district are operating according to their initial plans as introduced to the District Executive Committee, as such a joint supervision involving Government sector heads and Civil Society representatives is one way of ensuring that every NGO is living by its word.

“Some NGOs are clever in a way that they seduce the DEC by showing it good plans that they want to implement in the district, but when they are allowed to start operating they change behaviour and it takes too long for the Council to notice as we do not usually monitor their projects closely, that is why we want to change the trend so that we can be watching each NGO closely throughout its project implementation period,” said Magombo.

During the first occasion of the monitoring and supervisions which are to be taking place every Friday, the team toured interventions by Concern Worldwide who are implementing a project called right to learn in conjunction with the Women’s Legal Resource Centre (WOLREC) and Theatre for a Change (TFAC).

On his part, Chairperson for Phalombe Civil Society Network Louis Ng’oma said the initiative is very important as it would ensure that communities are getting all the deliverables as promised.

Said Ng’oma: “with this initiative we expect that at least in the next four to five years we will see some notable and sustainable developments in the communities where we are operating, unlike how it was in the past when NGOs were not put in the limelight and were able to be hiding behind other people’s interventions.”

He added that it is the wish of the current Civil Society Network leadership that non-governmental organizations should be regularly reporting to the district council on their progress in order to facilitate transparency and accountability.

Phalombe is one of the districts in which NGOs have been operating without regard to advice provided by the District Executive Committee and council secretariat, a thing that caused a congestion of NGOs implementing similar projects in the areas of T/As Kaduya and Nkhumba, while T/As Nkhulambe and Nazombe were left with very few NGOs ticking.