Members of Community of Practice of ProjectTrust, a project executed by Connected Development, a Non-governmental Organization, have stressed the need to ensure that the Community Charter of Demands (CCD) from each community is always a product of wider consultation with every segment including women, girls and youths.
Angel Network News (ANN) reports that
ProjectTrust State Support Officer in Anambra State, Uju Ananwude, gave the charge when members of CoP visited the Director, Planning, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Mr Arthur Iweanya in his office.
According to Ananwude, the visit was to relay their findings from interactions with some community people, who still complain of exclusion from government activities.
She said, “ProjectTrust focuses on health, education and WASH sectors of the state. We’ve gone to the field and discovered that there are some projects that community people are not aware of. Some of them also complain that they don’t know anything about budgeting.
“So, we are here to discuss our findings and encourage government to carry the community people not only traditional rulers and presidents-general along in determining the projects and the execution of such projects”.
Ananwude also urged the Director and other officials of government to work towards ensuring that government honours the CCDs from communities to as this would give them a sense of ownership.
The SSO also spoke about the NOMTRAC tool developed and proven by Connected Development in Kaduna in 2017, which she noted can be used by communities to nominate and track projects in their localities.
“We are looking at how we can use our NOMTRAC tool to track some constituency projects as well as state projects. Government should intentionally get people involved”.
Responding, the Director, Planning, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Arthur Iweanya, described Community Charter of Demand, as the global best practice, which engenders grassroots development.
“Around April or May of every year, we write the traditional rulers and presidents-general about the CCD. After that, we ask them for audience during their meetings to remind sensitize them about the CCD.
“To develop the CCD, the community needs to organize town hall meeting. Igwe will be there with the PG, women leader, youth leader, religious leaders, traders, CSOs. They will agree on three priority projects they want government to do for them”.
Iweanya encouraged those people and communities which are discouraged as a result of failure of government to execute the projects they nominated, to keep hope alive.
“I am happy that in our last meeting, one of them said that government came to execute one of the projects in their CCD. This is a plus. So, we keep telling them, don’t lose hope”.
The Director however stressed the need for communities to tailor their CCDs in alignment with the vision and five-point solution agenda of the present administration.
“Communities need as a matter of necessity to nominate in alignment with the vision of government. That way, the governor is likely to approve it”.
He also regretted that the budget performance for 2024 has been worrisome.
“Apart from ministries of Works and Housing, other sectors of the economy are dropping. The analysis of the first quarter, second quarter, show that Works and Housing access more of their approved funds than other ministries. We are now waiting for the analysis for the third quarter.
“So, we are telling MDAs to develop capacity to write convincing memos backed with relevant data to be able to get approval to access their budgeted funds”.
Iweanya stressed the need for CSOs like Connected Development to continue to help government get value for its scarce resources”.
