IHANDIRO SUB COUNTY GETS PERFORMANCE BONUS

Back ground

KALI has been working with Ihandiro Sub County on issues of Gender budgeting and governance, emphasizing planning and budgeting.

Ihandiro Sub County is found in Kasese district, Bukonzo west constituency. Being a mountainous area, its road network and communication is poor and therefore a hard to reach and hard to live area.

For many years, Ihandiro Sub County was one of the least performing sub counties in Kasese district in planning and budgeting for the community members. This was due to inadequate skills in planning and budgeting by the technical staff, committees and the elected leaders; planning process was basically desk work without involving the communities.

Through KALI monitoring findings, the above were revealed and interventions were designed in agreement with the sub county leadership, to improve the planning process.

KALI organized a meeting with the sub county leadership where action plans were drawn and a sub county gender budget advocacy group was established which helped in ensuring gender sensitive plans and budgets.

KALI then organized training workshops aimed at developing the capacities of the sub county leaders and technical staff in planning and budgeting processes which included their roles and responsibilities and thereafter, facilitated the planning meetings right from the village level to sub county level. This included supporting the budget conferences.

Because of the above interventions, I handiro sub county is now one of the best performing sub counties in the district. There has been a great improvement in the planning and budgeting processes and increased community participation at the grassroots level to the sub county level. This is portrayed by effective participation of councilors, the community and other stakeholders in the process especially the budget conferences to ensure their priorities are incorporated in the sub county development plan. This forms the basis for assessing any sub county’s performance, and hence a ground for bonus. For the financial years 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, Ihandiro sub county has been in position of getting these performance bonuses and this has increased on the sub county income.

In view of the above, most communities are willing and ready to participate in any development intervention as long as they are informed /invited and therefore, for effective planning and budgeting of any sub county, there is need for participation of all stakeholders.

By Betty K- KALI