Monday, November 10, 2008

PETS REPORTS NGORONGORO

NGORONGORO PUBLIC EXPENDITURE TRACKING SYSTEM COMMITTEE (PETS)

NGORONGORO PETS REPORT. SEPTEMBER 2008


ONESMO OLENGURUMWA NGORONGORO PETS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN AND FEMA SAIDEYA RECEIVING A CERTIFACATE OF RECOGNITION FOR THEIR EXAMPLARY WORK FROM USA AMBASSADOR M.GREEN
APPRECIATION

Ngorongoro PETS Committee sends our gratefulness to PINGO’S for their exemplary work to see PETS activities in Ngorongoro are effectively done, We thank Ngorongoro district council Chairman and district executive director for their mutual support to see PETS activities are well done ,we as well cast our thanksgiving to PACT Tanzania for the great role they played to see public expenditure tracking is funded and sponsored.




ONESMO OLENGURUMWA NGORONGORO PETS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN AND FEMA SAIDEYA RECEIVING A CERTIFACATE OF RECOGNITION FOR THEIR EXAMPLARY WORK FROM USA AMBASSADOR M.GREEN















INTRODUCTION.
Ngorongoro PETS committee was formed on July 2008 encompassed with 12 members. Before that PETS members were well trained on how to conduct PETS and after training they worked as a team together with the citizens to track where the problems lies and look the way forward . The committee managed to conduct Public Expenditure tracking survey/system (PETS) through five(5) wards include Digodigo, Soit sambu, Orgosorok, Arash and Pinyiny out of 14 wards.
The committee conducted PETS in three areas mainly livestock, education and natural resources’
.
FINDINGS.
Ngorongoro PETS committee have realized that the district is lugging behind in terms of development despite the fact that there are vey rich in natural resources. It is vey unfortunate that Citizens are suffering and is only few individuals who are enjoying the fruits of the whole district.
The committee managed to conduct PETS to all five wards mentioned and came out with the following
The district has various sources of income being money from central government , taxes, fains from wildlife as well as natural resources, that divides the district sources income into 2 sources of income:

(i) External sources
(ii) Own sources

The committee successfully managed to pass through the district budget for 2006-2007, 2007-2008 and discovered that the recurrent budget is 80% while the development budget for the district is only 20% . The committee suggested that it should at least be 50% equally .

In education sector the committee found various programs for development like TASAF, MMEM, MESS as well as community contribution. Through this programs the committee realized that to a large extent those programs were not properly implemented. A good example at Enguserosambu village can be noted, TASAF meant to build a house for primary school teachers, but surprisingly they did not finish building the house claiming that the money allocated was over, and there is no money to finish the building. When conducting PETS the committee realized that there was a linkage of money at district as well as at the village level. The only money used to build the house is 70%, then where are the 30% ?. the committee also discoved that the village school committees in Ngorongoro need knowledge (capacity building) which will enable them to manage their duties.

According to the District Education Officer he told PETS committee that the district lacks 400 school primary teachers. And he insisted that, this is a big problem.

Another problem is of capitation grants. The committee noted that money for capitation grant is less useful to schools. The policy states on papers that every child should get 10 USD but this is not what is practiced on the ground. Teachers even complained that the money for capitation in most cases is not released on time. And not given according to the number of pupils found at that particular school.

There was a problem in public procurement and tendering process. This is a very serious problem in Ngorongoro and the committee observed various cases where some intelligent people use these processes to enrich themselves and leave behind various programs incomplete.
The committee managed to find out that livestock services offered to livestocks are not offered on time and some time not offered to other places like Loliondo village and Sakala village. Villagers complain that services are not offered at the rain season instead are offered at summer time where the livestock have nothing to feed.Hence the vaccination turns out to be a disease to death to most of livestocks.
No education of modern livestock keeping system is offered to people in Ngorongoro .
We managed to track the maintenance of the Enguserosambu village cattle dip and found out that the money said to be used 300,000/= was not equivalent to what observed, when valuing the money and activities done it is only small percent of the money was used for maintenance even the heads of the departments admitted that the constructor who was given the tender was not a constructor.
We found that the district is rich of natural resources but not benefiting from these resources. Per year the district can collect only 350 million from various sources as owns sources from wildlife and natural resources.
This is very tiny amount of collection of revenue regarding that the district is rich of resources. The Ngorongoro conservation Authority can collect per year up to 30 billion from wildlife and tourism but sympathetically the district council is given 175 million as the distribution and contribution for development of people living in Ngorongoro district. The district had to be given 250 million but they said 75 million was not released due to tax payment. This is puzzle to people in the district. This shows that there is no proper distribution of public funds.
The 20% of money collected from natural resources had to be sent to villages but this is not done even to one village.
The Engaresero gate collects up to 65 million per year but the village does not benefit, even the 20% is not returned in due time and if returned they don’t follow the 20% requirement.
The villagers complained that they started practicing the program of Opportunity and Obstacle for Development(O and O.D) by having by-laws to improve village own resources but the District council up to day refused to approve the by-laws to enable the village to benefit from tourists who seem to visit the lake Natron freely.
We as well managed to find that many of the village finance committees like Ololosokwan village finance committee lack knowledge on money management despite the fact that they collect huge amount of money. Ololosokwan collects 184 million per year from various tourist companies. The village manage to use the many collected for development programs like sending and paying for their school fees many student from the village, the village currently sponsoring 10 university student and 122 secondary students.
We then recommend that the village committees to be empowered on how to manage their duties and enable them to use public fund with great care and lastly make the other government officials accountable.
We recommend the development programs money to be exposed to all people before any implementation.
There should be equal distribution of money collected from natural resources.
School teachers working in hard condition in Ngorongoro and other public servants to be provided with incentives to enable them to sustain their livelihood.
Pupils should be provided with lunch because we found many of them skip that meal due to long distance between schools and their homes.
The district council should collaborate with villages to advertise the resources we have in Ngorongoro like the like Natron, mount Lengai and flamingoes.
The district budget should be put in a simple way and exposed to all notice boards to increase transparency in the use of public fund.
ONESMO OLENGURUMWA PETS CHAIRMAN NGORONGORO

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