Why citizens should participate in budget monitoring and tracking

Adjumani | In five districts, a cross-section of citizen and voice action practitioners, local leaders, and some district leaders were trained on monitoring and spending tracking for food security, nutrition, and water and sanitation (WASH).

The project will benefit Adjumani, Yumbe, and Maracha in West Nile, as well as the Nwoya district in the Acholi sub-region.

Christina Namubiru, Project Coordinator for the Right to Grow at the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG), told tndNews that the country’s sanitation, food security, and nutrition situation is dire and requires citizen collaboration.

“We are looking at aspects of nutrition and nutrition basically because we see 26% of children in Uganda are malnourished. So that means some even die before the age of five, this is overwhelming. That’s why citizens’ participation in budget monitoring is key,” Christine said.

She added, “We engage the government to see that issues of data, nutrition-sensitive are considered when drafting budgets. But also, we try to come to the grassroots to build the capacity of the people, CBOs, the community-based facilitators on how best they can engage government or hold government when it comes to issues of nutrition, food security, and wash.”

Mourine Tadriboyo Malice, Adjumani’s population officer, stated that community participation in the budgeting cycle is critical because it allows local governments to better plan for service delivery.

“The purpose of the budget helps in identification of problems, setting up of goals that are achievable and identifying collaborating stakeholders before designing the activities, but if the citizens do not participate, it will be difficult to identify the issues from their areas,” said Tadriboyo.

Angela Aballo, a Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) practitioner from Nwoya district, stated that she is now equipped to monitor and track budgets. According to her, holding local leaders accountable will improve service delivery in areas such as food security, nutrition, water, and sanitation.

“In our community we did not know that we must do monitoring, and truck expenditure. When I go back I will encourage the members of the community to participate in the budget cycle to ensure that services that have been poor can improve,” Abalo said.

Jenefer Apio Okeny, another Citizen and Voice Action practitioner from the Nwoya district, observed that the community will not be satisfied with the services unless citizens participate in the budget process and monitor and track them.

“Now we have been empowered to monitor and track expenditure, in our area some of the services are missing, especially the issues of malnutrition, we are going to work with the local council ones (LC1s), other leaders to ensure issues of malnutrition are addressed in our district,” Apio said.

According to the CSBAG’s 2023 annual report, they were able to shape public finance management reforms aimed at improving accountability, transparency, and combating corruption by working collaboratively to strengthen budget monitoring and expenditure tracking.