Precedent set by EHP district

Local MP Mehrra Minne Kipefa, while presenting the 2016 District Support Grants of K500,000 compliance reports on Wednesday, said the district had opted to take a new approach by way of furnishing their reports in an electronic format for distribution and swift appraisal.  

Kipefa, who is also the Minister for Labour and Industrial Relations, said standards for electronic recording, processing and distribution of financial and other business reports (digital reporting) is the way forward for easy accessibility of acquittal information for decision-making.

The reports were saved in flash drives and CDs with a brief cover letter explaining what has been expedited.

“Bringing large quantity of documents containing acquittal reports would cost the district administration resources, time and freight costs,” said Kipefa.

He stated that the culture of hauling bulk documents should be done away with.

DIRD acting secretary, Aihi Vaki, said we are in a digital world hence provinces and districts should compile their acquittal reports in a digital format.

“The information is there, you don’t have to go through volumes and volumes of documents. It is a waste of time going through large volumes of documents.

“With this we can cut down the work load,” Vaki stressed.     

He said digital reporting would thus open up new possibilities and also raise fundamental issues in relation to serving multiple stakeholders, meeting decision-making needs and achieving transparency.

The second term MP, while presenting his report, highlighted that Obura-Wonenara is one of the difficult districts in EHP to administer.

“Two-third of the electorate is covered by a road link serving more than 89,000 populations while rest are inaccessible.”

Only third level airplanes access these areas.

“Currently, we have 23 existing airstrips, which is the highest in the country,” Kipefa said.