Disability is not Inability

:: Performance Contracts could be effective way to monitor the Mainstreaming of disability agenda

About a year ago in 2005 the Kibaki administration initiated a system to appraise its work as a government. As in school it is important to have a report card to show how you are doing a given job. Various officers of government were therefore employed on contracts that say you will keep your job depending on how well you acheive given performance targets. This applies all sections of government from Ministers to civil servants and parastatals and Agencies including the National Council of Persons with Disabilities (NCPWDs).

One year down the line, the first parade was held to declare who was best performer and who was worst. The potential to encourage competion as we have seen in schools is real. We hope to see the days when ministeries will put serious effort to perform that they may achieve something. The curent rewarding system may not encourage this. We have seen the competitive spirit that secondary and primary schools have shown when there is an annual ranking of the best schools and students.

It is important to have budget allocations be used as rewarding system. Policy priority and perfomance efficiency should determine budget allocations. This would mean that ministries receive 70% of their budgets allocations, only if they achieve a certain level of perfomance. This implies also that the ministries who return a large chunk of their budgetary allocations and perform poorly are not allocated full budgetary requests. This method may make the report cards for the ministries useful and spur the competitive spirit necessary to achieve some level of efficiency and effectiveness.

This method may easily collide with say government political agenda. If for example the government wants to build more houses or roads and the ministry concerned did not perform to standard how does it allocate more funds? In such times various issues including a reshuffle of top officers like Permanet secretaries may be necessary.

Higher stakes in implementing performance contracts will definitely also mean more efforts by ministries. The regional balance issues when selecting ministers and assistant Ministers may cause challenges. Minister about to be sacked are known to resort to tribal cocoons to defend themselves.

Policy priorites pegged to or determined by Political manifestos should be what determines the contract between an elected government and the citizens. The media should in a discussive environment, know, monitor or evaluate governance based on the performance of policy plans and explain to the citizens including the disability community.

This would help alot in sectors like the disability where we find it hard to see the relevance of government to our lives. The legistlative agenda pursued by any governnment shown be determined by the policy that most represent public policy priority as represented in the legistlative assembly.

How do we build public-civil partnerships in improving disability within perfomance monitoring?

Mainstreaming disability though very well articulated in various constituional and public debate does not seem to find effective policy priority. The evaluation of perfomance in disability issues has not identified tangible groud. Do we determine perfomance by implementation of the persons with disabilites Act? Do we determine it by what the NCPWD does according to its Strategic Plan? How do we increase perfomance in delivering tangible benefits to disability community? How do we mobilise the resources and capacity of the civil society in disability matters? Can the government public resources be channeled to more disability civil organisations through NCPWDs to improve impact? Can the AIDS funds for example be channeled through NCPWDs to disability organisations countrywide?


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