Planning PS Saitoti Torome moots plan to vet all State projects to curb wastage of funds

Principal Secretary for the State Department of Planning Torome Saitoti during an interview in his Treasury House office in Jan 2016. [PHOTO: JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

All Government institutions, including counties, will soon be required to comprehensively evaluate projects to assess if they provide value for money.

Projects found to drain taxpayer’s funds without a return on investment will either be scrapped or re-engineered.

Planning Principal Secretary Saitoti Torome said the Devolution Ministry is working on a policy that will require all Government agencies, as well as county governments, to undertake periodic monitoring and evaluation that will inform continued implementation of different projects.

He said while such evaluation is critical, it has been largely ignored by most Government institutions.

The PS said a majority of Government agencies that have carried out monitoring and evaluation of projects, do it line with guidelines by institutions financing such projects as opposed to being an internal requirement.

“The Government is in the process of coming up with the Kenya National Monitoring and Evaluation Policy. Once approved and adopted, it will serve as a basis for establishing systems and processes within Government for continuously evaluating projects being implementing,” he said.

“An important aspect to the policy will the provision of a monitoring an evaluation budget that will enable us to build the necessary infrastructure and capacity in undertaking such evaluation across different projects.”

He said the policy requires both National and county governments to set up monitoring and evaluation committees.

Bigger impact

“The policy will provide implementation institutional framework by forming a national steering committee on monitoring and evaluation,” said the PS.

“It will also provide for the formation of similar committees in the counties.

All counties have projects and programmes that they implement and we want them to have an monitoring and evaluation committee to be able to track the progress and enhance the implementation.”

This way, he said, the different institutions will be able to tell if their projects have an impact on the ground and if not, have recommendations as to how to implement a project for a bigger impact on citizens.
Mr Torome said the policy is in the final stages of being approved by various Government organisations.