By Vincent Gunde
The Government of Malawi is pursuing a number of reforms in the public sector with the aim of improving service delivery and one such sector is the National Audit Office (NAO) which is in the process of developing Citizen Engagement Strategy.
The citizen engagement strategy has the purposes of enhancing transparency, accountability and public trust, empowering citizens to participate in ensuring responsible use of public resources, and strengthening partnership with CSOs and other stakeholders.
Speaking during an interface meeting with CSOs and Council officials in Dowa, Public Relations Officer for the National Audit Office (NAO) Rabson Kagwamminga, said the strength of democracy is measured by the participation of citizens.
Kagwamminga said the development process of the citizen engagement strategy will involve consultative approach through engagement of local authorities CSOs and citizens and gathering feedback through various platforms and initiatives.
He said the National Audit Office will continue consultations and validation with key stakeholders to refine and finalize the strategy with the objective of awareness of NAOs mandate and role, share audit results with citizens in accessible formats and enable citizen input as influence and track recommendation.
The Chief Auditor said the key activities to be implemented for the citizen engagement strategy will include public awareness campaigns, community engagement events, capacity building workshops, citizen feedback mechanisms and media partnership.
“The citizen engagement strategy will see to it that there is greater involvement of citizens in good governance,” said Kagwamminga.
He said the next steps will be finalizing the strategy based on feedback, implementation plan development and continued engagement with stakeholders for on- going support, thanking the development partner -UNICEF for supporting the initiative.
In his remarks, Dowa CSO Network Chairperson Maxwell Kadutsa, said CSOs for the district will contribute their inputs as representatives of the citizens and communities so that they empower and civic educate them on how they can do some audits and be able to provide checks and balances for projects which are being implemented in the district
Kadutsa said CSOs of the district have appreciated the coming up of the strategy and was quick to point it out that there is a lot of gaps that need to be addressed so that citizens and communities should all be involved.
