The revelations during the just concluded National Leadership Retreat that many government projects had stalled for some mysterious reasons lifted the lid off a serious problem. For the Minister of Infrastructure to refer to the long delayed Gishoma Peat Project as a “disaster”, then it must be riddled with more problems that the public is aware of. But most important of all, many government officials did not use due diligence before the implementation phase, were incompetent or corruption was involved. If engineers in the relevant ministries could not discern faulty and unrealistic designs, then they are in the wrong place and the Public Service Commission should step in and weed out incompetency. But there is no guarantee that their replacements will perform any better in the absence of an oversight body with the mandate to inspect and approve national projects and recommend sanctions where irregularities are discovered. Perhaps the body could even be placed under the Office of the Ombudsman or merged with the Auditor General, but whatever is done to address the wasteful and suspicious loss of government resources, it should be immediate. As the country becomes more prosperous, it will put in place many development projects that might be marred by corruption, if there is no enforced oversight. But as long as punitive sanctions are not meted out against incompetent and rotten apples, it will be a protracted battle, yet the country cannot afford to be held back in its race towards transforming into a middle income economy.
