By Maureen Agbala :
Anambra State Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Mrs Chiamaka Nnake has revealed that the essence of the partnership coordination and review meeting is the need to have an understanding of all partnerships’ operations in the state. This is to ensure that they pass through the necessary processes so as to allow for proper coordination of partnership activities in the state.
The Commissioner stated this during a two-day Partnership Coordination and Review meeting organized by the ministry.
She maintained that if the state understands what the partners are doing, it will help to reduce duplication of projects in the state since the government has a limited budget constraint that will feed all the government counterpart funds.
She re-emphasized the government’s willingness to meet and fulfill her obligations in the counterpart funded projects with its partners.
The Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs Chinyere Nwabachili, stressed that the review meeting will help to assess their collaborative effects, thereby identifying the challenges they are having in their various areas of intervention and give them the space to identify opportunity for improvement.
The Head of Department, Partnership Coordination, Mrs Obianama Orji said that the objective of the programme is to know each partner’s area of intervention to prevent duplication of efforts and also wasting of the scarce resources.
She maintained that it will also enable them to know the activities implemented so far by partners and the other outstanding activities and be able to know and review the achievement made so far by the partners.
“Also the after programme implementation challenges, that are constraints or bottlenecks encountered during programme implementation and proffer proper recommendations for solution to these challenges,” she explained.
The partners took turns to illustrate their impacts and efforts to contribute to the development of the state and the challenges they encountered.
The focal person on nutrition, Dr Rose Amasiana, emphasized the need for mothers to do exclusive breastfeeding from 0 to 6 months old, saying that it is crucial for infants health and development.
* Agbala is of the Ministry of Information, Anambra State *