21 Jun 2022

Community score card (CSC) is a powerful tool to monitor services, empower citizens and ensure accountability  of service providers.

Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Development chairperson, Mr Onneetse Ramogapi made the remarks during Gantsi community score card field testing on Monday.

He emphasised that the mandate of the committee was to act as an oversight body over government ministries, departments and agencies with portfolio responsibilities of finance, development, trade and industry.

The committee is also tasked with a duty to examine government policies and legislations under its portfolio and make recommendations for review or amendments, he said.

However, he noted that for the committee to achieve its mandate there was need to conduct a participatory monitoring and evaluation process to put ownership and responsibility for service delivery in the hands of government and service recipients.

He said through the implementation of community score card they would identify service delivery successes and challenges.

Mr Ramogapi said the move would also promote participatory democracy as members of the community had a role in service provision cycle.

He further said score cards developed around identified sectors and services, allowed communities and government departments to remain in touch with progress made throughout the delivery cycle, and being able to respond timely to bottlenecks.

Moreover, he said the feedback from the score cards would benefit both Parliament and executives as they would use it as an accountability tool which provided immediate responses from community and immediate feedback to service providers.

He added that the score cards would also help to identify potential reforms through dialogue and collaborations between service providers and recipients.

For her welcome remarks Kgosi Annah Rankho lauded the committee for engaging communities, saying the deliberations would improve quality, efficiency and accountability at a community level.

She said participatory process by both communities and service providers would strengthen mutual understanding, ensure collaboration and close gaps.

In closing, MP for Ghanzi North, Mr John Thiite said the community score card was a welcome development as it would empower communities to objectively gauge services rendered to them.

He said feedback from service recipients would also encourage service providers to monitor programmes or projects’ sustainability. BOPA