The Secretary for the Department of National Planning and Monitoring (DNPM) has refuted comments alluding that his department has no guidelines to assess and vet development plans of provinces and districts.
Koney Samuel has responded to comments by Stephen Rambe, Deputy Secretary for the Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD), in an article published by one of the dailies on September 5th.
Rambe was quoted: “The National Planning Department is now responsible for vetting all development plans for districts and provinces.” He went on to state that DNPM currently had no standard guideline or tool book to assess and vet development plans and this was an issue that needed to be addressed.
Secretary Samuel clarified that his Department does have an existing alignment toolkit and DNPM has always worked with the relevant authorities to guide them in formulating their respective provincial and district plans.
“As a result of DNPM’s guidance and commitment to date, 71 districts and 16 provinces have submitted their 5-Year Development Plans all aligned to the Medium Term Development Plan III. These are either vetted and/or launched. The rest are still in progress,” said Samuel.
“The development of each provincial and district development plans have been ongoing since November 2017. The formulation of Sector Development Plans are also now in progress.”
As for the hiring of consultants, Secretary Samuel clarified that those decisions relied entirely upon the respective Provincial and District Governments in order to meet DNPM deadlines for the National Budget preparations.
(Secretary Koney Samuel)