Districts ‘shun demanding tasks’

Several districts commit to lower performance contracts targets so as to score highly during the evaluation exercise, officials have disclosed.The revelation was made, yesterday, at a meeting chaired by the Minister of Local Government, James Musoni, to discuss about Imihigo preparation, evaluation process and its outcomes.The Local Government ministry has been carrying out an exercise to assess development margins the districts achieved through the performance contracts (Imihigo) in the2011/2012 fiscal year.However, according to the Egide Rugamba, the Director General of Planning at the ministry, who also headed one of the evaluation teams, some district authorities tend to present lower targets in their performance contracts so as to attain higher ranking scores; a practice which he said hampers development.“We discovered that some district authorities commit lower targets that would require less effort to implement and hence lack a significant impact on their communities,” Rugamba said.During the evaluation exercise, it was also realised that some districts commit targets that are beyond their capacity while others lack knowledge on how to set their targets basing on the unique needs of their districts.Local leaders attribute the implementation challenges to the failure by donors to fulfill their pledges to help achieve some of the performance contracts.To mitigate the implementation challenges, the government will set up and implementation plan based on specific targets.“We are going to put in place guidelines based on specific targets presented by the districts to ease the implementation,” Musoni said, insisting that performance contracts should be agreed upon with the residents through their councillors.The ongoing evaluation has cited progress in land consolidation that has attained a 90 per cent implementation rate. According to the latest evaluation indicators, 60 per cent of the total evaluation will be on economic progress, social transformation would account for at least at 30 per cent while governance will make up 10 per cent.Governance indicators include districts’ ability to resolve citizens’ complaints, functioning of community assemblies, availability of performance contracts at family and sector level, as well as exemplary management of finances.Imihigo were introduced in 2006 as a tool to accelerate implementation of development programmes annually.

National

Districts ‘shun demanding tasks’