CSPR disputes poverty reduction statistics

CSPR disputes poverty reduction statistics
By By Margaret Mtonga
Wed 06 Jan. 2010, 14:50 CAT

Low funding has negatively affected most of the targets for the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) in the year ending 2009, Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) executive director Patrick Mucheleka has said.

And Mucheleka said the recently released Central Statistics Office monthly (CSO) bulletin that poverty levels had reduced in the country was not the true picture on the ground. In an interview, Mucheleka said that that prioritization of resource allocation by government has not been given its due attention.

“Almost all government funded FNDP programmes have seriously suffered from poor funding. In addition, such funding is disbursed late making the realization of current and future work programmes very difficult,” he said.

Mucheleka said other than poor funding, weak institutional capacity and in some cases, unqualified human resource were the major factors leading to weak institutional capacity. He said where qualified staff exist, their performance has tended to be sub-optimal, due to low morale resulting from poor incentives.

“Weak administrative capacity is essentially at all levels, national, provincial, district and sub-district. One offshoot of the weak administrative capacity is poor monitoring, evaluation and coordination of the FNDP interventions. Consequently, this has been a recipe for duplication and inefficient resource utilization,” he said.

Mucheleka also said there was a widespread fragmentation of the FNDP efforts and projects due to inadequate government leadership.

“The absence of an effective monitoring and evaluation in the various sectors is one of the greatest yawning gaps facing FNDP interventions in Zambia. An effective monitoring and evaluation system needs to be established in all sectors among other things to ensure development and promotion of appropriate and quality indicators for impact assessment of FNDP interventions,” Mucheleka said.

Meanwhile CSPR said that the current release by the Central Statistics office (CSO) that poverty levels had reduced was not the true picture on the ground.

“It does not make sense to say that the poverty levels have reduced in the country and yet Zambians were wallowing in abject poverty,” he said.

Mucheleka said these statistics they revealed were levels that are carried out from revised methodologies of measuring poverty according to the international standards.