WESTERN PROVINCIAL government representatives and stakeholders are currently undergoing a two-day consultation meeting to ascertain the current status of the ward profiling that was conducted in 2013 in rural Western Province.
A local consultant, Joe Rausi, conducted the consultation in collaboration with the Western Province Planning Division.
“The meeting set to dialogue and find out the current status of the 2013 ward profiling work plan, and to agree on the approach, a way forward to work on to complete the ward profiling and strategic planning formulation for Western Province,” said Mr Rausi.
Western Province Chief Planning Officer, Margaret Moveni, said the ward profiling exercise that was conducted in 2013 was poorly done due to a number of reasons which resulted in inadequate data collected.
“We have experienced some setbacks and when the data collectors return, no data was collected which calls for new data must be collected.
“People have never been informed of when we go around to collect data, there was no people in the village.
“Even data collectors have difficulties in understanding some of the questionnaires, and therefore we recommend some easier inputs to the questionnaires in the ward profiling and strategic planning question paper.
“To make a difference in 2016, can we do the input ourselves?” Mrs Moveni puts forward.
Mr Rausi said the view of the Ministry of Provincial Government and Institutional Strengthening is that every input and data must go through the Ministry, but adds he has noted what has been raised.
MPA for ward 18, Solingi Lilo, said stakeholders such as RDP, Commerce, Fisheries, Agriculture and Education Divisions have some of this information at hand.
Mr Lilo questions that if these institutions have these information, at what stage of these project can all these institutions collect all these inputs together.
Mr Rausi, while acknowledging ‘harmonisation’ as echoed by Mr Lilo, said the ministry’s point of view is that it wants the survey to be re-conducted to obtain the most reliable information.
Mr Lilo however said the rationale of the survey is to enable the provincial government and its members to have backup information on the gaps and needs in the 26 wards of Western province.
Western provincial government minister, Isaac Vula Tatapu, said the data collected is a living document that would guide the development aspects of the province.
“We must harmonise and build profile based on this development profile and come up with an accurate database.
“Other stakeholders can give us support on ward profile based on their work in the communities and people,” Mr Tatapu said.
The consultation will today sum up and agree on the approach and way forward to work on to complete the ward profiling and strategic planning formulation for Western Province.
A two-week timeframe has been proposed yesterday but has not gone down well with few participants, especially the MPAs who opposed it, saying the two-week timeframe is very short to conduct such survey.
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