By Tokpa M. Tarnue- tarnue82@gmail.com
VOINJAMA, Liberia-A two-day social audit training for stakeholders across Lofa County has ended here in this northwestern city.
The training, which ended on Tuesday, November 23, 2021, was conducted by the Community Safety Initiative (CSI) in partnership with the government of Liberia Ministry of Finance Development Planning (MFDP) project entitle Public Financial Management for Institutional Strengthening (PFMRISP) Under the Budget Cycle Participation brought together fifty participants from various communities, civil societies and local government officials of the county.
Giving an overview of the capacity building training, the executive director for the Community Safety Initiative, Samuka Sannoh disclosed that the training is part of a government of Liberia Budget Cycle Participations project titled Facilitating Accountability in Social Sector Programmes with funding from the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.
According to Mr. Sannoh, the seven months project is a grant from the government of Liberia through the Ministry of Finance Development Planning with support from the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
This project seeks to train community members, civil societies and government officials on how they can access development projects.
Mr. Sannoh named key objectives of the project as promoting transparency and accountability in public programmes and projects implementation; informing, educating, engaging and empowering the people or stakeholders about their rights; providing a platform for people or stakeholders to express their grievances and needs: and promoting people/stakeholders’ participation at all stages of programme implementation.
Others objectives include strengthening grassroots democracy and grassroots institutions; building up the capacity of people participating in the social audit; and also strengthening programmes by improving planning and recording based on feedback from field social audits.
CSI Budget Cycle ParticipationTraining Participants
The three principals of social audit were emphasized by the Community Safety Initiative Director.
They include People’s participation and multi-perspective approach, which he said provides an opportunity to stakeholders to debate and deliberate, represent and express their views freely in a social audit forum.
Other aspects includes regular and recurring activity Social audit, which he said must be a regular and recurring process and lastly, Sharing Information, a vital in the process of social audit which aims at attaining transparency and accountability.
Mr. Sannoh said that the just-ended county level social audit follows the district level training sessions in all the eleven administrative districts of Lofa County.
Social Audit Committees at the end of the training were established and are to be involved in monitoring government projects in their respective communities to ensure successful implementation of those projects.
He said the organization, through the Budget Cycle Participation, is enhancing the capacity of 200 stakeholders on budget formulation, execution and social audit; to conduct social audit; and influence the participation of citizens in FY2022 budget formulation in Lofa County.
Committing on benefits of the project, Mr. Sannoh disclosed that implementing agency becomes more accountable and that the community also becomes more responsible for achieving the developmental goals.
Vulnerable groups in the community will also get a chance to express their concerns and give their perspective on programme implementation, according to the Community Safety Initiative official.
According to him, other benefits include new strategies that are visualized to speed up programme implementation, so as to achieve the desired goals, among other thing.