The Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) has shamed the government for only completing 17 out of the 53 milestones in their scorecard on the implementation of the National Action Plans 2016-2018 (NAP II) for the Open Government Partnership (OGP).
The scorecard was released yesterday, 16 November 2017, at the SLAJ Harry Yansaneh Memorial Hall by the Coordinator of BAN, Abu Bakarr Kamara with support from Christian Aid. He spoke on issues relating to the OGP, which he says has been the platform around the globe with the primary objective of promoting government’s openness.
“We developed a tracking tool for the OGP Nap II, to track the status of implementation process. What government has done in terms of fighting corruption and improving accountability and transparency issues? We worked with the responsible institutions that are to implement these national plans,” said Kamara.
He said that the governments set itself to achieve 10 commitments that have 53 milestones to be accomplished within two years. The monitoring was done in partnership with the OGP and CSO steering committees for the first one year of the plan, as they received comments on the status of the implementation.
“We collected the information and a draft was presented and the MDAs were invited to validate it. We also had one-on-one meetings with some MDAs before it was finalised. But some MDAs did not send their comments on the draft.”
Kamara said that with only 17 completed projects in terms of implementation, the country has a long way to go in achieving the entire milestones. The OGP commitments are supposed to be real issues that affect the citizens.”
The OGP Program Manager, Hannah H. Jimmy, said that they have succeeded in building strong partnership with CSOs. “Their role has been to monitor the implementations of these plans. We had challenges in the previous implementation of the first plan.”
She said a lack of information and commitment during the first plan has been addressed. They did a cabinet presentation on this second plan for the heads of the MDAs to be aware of the implementation process. “So now we have less challenges as these plans need to be done within two years.”
A mid-term self-assessment report has been sent to the Support Unit in America. “We have transformative commitments to be able to transform the lives of people in this country.”
BAN executive committee member, Mohamed Sillah, Director of Action Aid, said that they have been consistently publishing reports on public financial managements as a network.
“Everything we publish goes through a scientific process trying to provide accurate data. And, we even try as much as possible to be re-evaluated by the people we are evaluating before we release the information to the public.”
Sillah thanked the government for signing-up to the OGP and promised that they will make very good opportunity of the space being given to them. “How far do we stimulate people’s interest on these issues, so we are challenging journalist to dig deeper…”
He went on to say that commitments have been made by different line ministries and have not been implemented. “Someone should be held responsible or else it will defeat the purpose for which a secretariat was even set up and the time set for some of these commitments has elapsed for over seven months,” he said.
He queried further why as a country commitments are made and not implemented.
“If there are challenges, we need to state them. I am appealing that once commitments have been made we need to follow through as we have less than one year to complete the remaining 36 milestones.”
Chinsia Pascho-George, from Christian Aid, said accountable systems of governance does not happen overnight. “It is a continuous process. There are so many policies in Sierra Leone but the implementation, delivery and how it is changing the lives of people is a concern. We want accountability towards social service delivery,” she said.
ZJ/16/11/17
By Zainab Joaque
Friday November 17, 2017.
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