Citizen forums urged to help improve delivery of public services
United Purpose (UP) has urged citizen forums in Dedza to engage in productive dialogue with government as a way of improving transparency and accountability in the public service.
Speaking Monday at the end of a Community Social Accountability Learning Forum UP organised, the organisation’s programs manager in the district, Blessings Kambombo said democracy demands that citizens should have their concerns properly addressed by government.
“We are promoting monitoring of public resource management and enhancing public service delivery at all levels.
“This learning today will enhance effectiveness, efficiency and transparency in the delivery of public services in the district,” Kambombo said.
He said enhancing the skills of Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) groups who are supported by World Vision and Public Expenditure Tracking and Social Audit groups will ensure that citizens are empowered.
This, Kambombo said, will allow them engage in productive dialogue with government focused on improving public service delivery.
“We invited different citizen forums that use different social accountability monitoring tools such as community score card, social audit and public expenditure tracking to share how these tools work and how we can adopt them to deliver services that aim at benefiting the communities we serve,” Kambombo added.
In her remarks, guest speaker at the event, NICE Civic Education Officer for Ntcheu Alinafe Chikakuda said citizen forums are crucial in addressing concerns that people have in the communities, especially on development.
“Our interest is to find out which tools are more effective in order to create a channel which can be used to send concerns from citizens as well as receive rapid government response so that Malawian citizens should thrive,” she said.
Chikakuda explained that without proper channels for citizens to express their concerns, there is distrust and suspicions on all government activities in course of provision of essential public services.
This is a great forum to empower the community to understand public resource management process and demand for explanation from authorities on how the resources are being used. Lack of transparency and accountability will always lead to speculations and mistrust by the citizens. Mismanagement of public resources will be minimised if our communities are active enough to demand for accountability from authorities.