15 January 2005	Saturday	04 Zilhaj 1425

LAHORE, Jan 14: The Punjab government has admitted that the overall performance of the Women Health Project has not been up to the desired level due to a number of factors.

The government has admitted this in the wake of concern shown by the federal government about the slow progress of the project. Federal Health Minister Naseer Khan had recently written a strong letter to the Punjab health department, expressing his grave concern over 'lethargy' in this regard.

Meanwhile, talking to Dawn, the minister said the federal government had given the women health projects to provinces to implement those at a grassroots level and improve indicators of women and children's health.

He said the NWFP had run the project very well, but the Punjab failed to come up to the expectations. "The success of projects mainly depends on good managers," he said.

Mr Khan said he had planned a review meeting of the project in Islamabad in a week's time. "We will monitor the project and we want results." Responding to the federal government's concern, Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed has sent a letter to Mr Khan in which he has explained reasons for delay in implementation of the project.

As the project life is nearing completion and large agenda remains in hand, Dr Javed has also sought support from the project-related authorities in the Asian Development Bank for coordination and speedy decision making.

In a detailed letter, Dr Javed has stated that the Project Coordination Unit was operationalized late due to delayed sanctioning of posts and opening of bank accounts. This resulted in wastage of substantial time at a crucial stage.

He said the scare of rigorous accountability in the post-October 1999 period lowered the morale of the officers most of who preferred to defer decisions involving expenditure.

He said the posting of procurement officer was delayed for two years and there had been a rapid turnover of project directors. The post of civil engineer, which was essential for execution of civil works, was not included in the PC-I form of the project.

Subsequently, alternative arrangements for execution of civil works through the District Works and Services Department were finalized as late as in April 2003, he said in the letter.

The minister said procurements could not be started during the initial two years of project life because of delay in need assessment of inputs and approval of purchase procedures by the ADB.

He said various project activities like strategic planning, Annual District Women Health Plans preparation, NGO contracting and developing Monitoring and Evaluation System had been completed with the technical assistance of the Multi-Donor Support Unit and the chief technical advisor of the project at the federal level.

This resulted in non-utilization of allocations for consultant services available in the provincial project. Similarly, the health minister said, the inputs from other programmes like TB drugs, contraceptives, EPI and micro-nutrients reduced pressure on procurement of supplies for this project, leaving a huge amount of unutilized resources.

He stated that pre-qualification of NGOs was not initiated in the two years whereas hiring of NGOs according to the guidelines of the ADB was a time-consuming process, which resulted in savings against allocations for the initial project life.

He said the training component was inordinately delayed and could only be started during the third year of the programme. He said the change in exchange rate of US$ from Rs50 per US$ in 1999 to current rate of Rs58 per US$ had resulted in substantial savings.

The minister said that it was, however, heartening to note that most of the difficulties seemed to have been taken care of as a result of serious efforts made by the Punjab government in the recent past. The project was now going on well, he added.

According to Dr Javed, vigorous efforts had been made to complete the civil works. The development work at 41 out of 50 rural health centres, four out of six district headquarters hospitals and five out of seven tehsil headquarters hospitals was near completion.

He said the remaining schemes had been advertised and contracts would be awarded shortly. He said some adjustments in the scope of civil works and change of locations would result in saving of funds.

Explaining the progress made so far, the minister claimed that the hospital equipment worth Rs71 million had been supplied while more equipment worth Rs73 million was under delivery. Contracts worth Rs41 million had been awarded and tenders of Rs147 million were under evaluation, he added.

Although the Punjab government took a late start, now training of 3,906 health service providers, including male and female medical officers, specialists, mid-level managers, lady health visitors and paramedical staff, had been completed as envisaged in the project.