The Directorate of the National Anti-corruption Campaign Steering Committee (NACCSC) is conducting training for three County Anti-corruption Civilian Oversight Committees (CACCOC) on social audits for community projects, in a bid to enhance accountability and transparency and curb corruption.
Among the CACCOCs that benefited from the training are participants from Machakos, Kitui, and Makueni Counties, who are being trained on how to undertake audits on community projects in their areas of jurisdiction.
The training was undertaken by the Lower Eastern Regional Anti-corruption Officer, Sophi Ligondo, who inducted the invited participants at a hotel in Wote town during a five-day Capacity Building and Training Workshop on Tuesday.
Ligondo disclosed that the CACCOCs will cascade the knowledge and create awareness to members of the public in their areas of operation to enable the citizens to know the process of implementing projects.
“This training will empower the CACCOCs to have the capacity to carry out social audits on government projects being implemented by various government agencies in their areas,” said Ligondo on Tuesday while addressing the participants from the three counties.
“NACCSC has operationalized 47 CACCOCs in the country. These networks are critical structures that will undertake nationwide public education sensitization and awareness creation to curb corruption,” she added.
The training aims to empower social audits, which are citizen-driven tools used to engage citizens, community members, and civil society organizations in collecting and publicly sharing information on available resources allocated for service delivery and public works.
Also show the steps taken to ensure the work done on public projects actually benefits the people whom it is intended for besides knowing that monies have been spent prudently.
Ligondo further said that the Committees will undergo two further training sessions before they undertake auditing of community projects including Wote Reticulation at Kamunyoro Dam, County Police Commander Office constructed by National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF), and Kalamba Fruit Plant, respectively.
Makueni County Commissioner (CC), Khalif Abdullahi, said that the workshop will empower them with knowledge and acquire skills to assist them to conduct a social audit of projects in service delivery.
“The Workshop is crucial in enhancing your knowledge and becoming effective in-service delivery. It will also help you to acquire skills to conduct social audits of projects in your area of jurisdiction,” said Abdullahi while opening the workshop on Tuesday.
“Also, you will be impacted positively with skills to carry out public awareness of government projects being undertaken in your locality,” added the Administrator.
Present at the event were the Acting Director NACCSC Tryphosa Achar, County Security team among others.
By Patrick Nyakundi
