By Mphatso Nkuonera
Lilongwe, Mana: Vice president Saulos Klaus Chilima on Thursday inspected the Presidential Delivery Unit Labs in order to appreciate progress since the Delivery Labs sat two weeks ago.
Sitting at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC), the Delivery Labs have gradually moved from one step to another starting with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) listing the projects they have planned to implement, the implementation plans, and doing problem solving to unblock obstacles or to accelerate delivery.
Speaking after the inspection, Chilima said he was happy that there is a lot of good news from this initiative.
“I am delighted but I will not discuss much as that is the duty of the President who sanctioned the Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU). I am happy with what is happening in all the four clusters I went to. There is good progress,” he said.
He added the lab gives the people have an opportunity to know how to go about project management and how business do in order to achieve a developed nation, he said.
He however observed that there are however some disparities on the statistics of projects from some MDAs that have been presented at PDU when compared with the records.
“The number of projects that I know have a slight difference from those I have seen. Its good things are going on well, some approvals have been done and other issues are resolved but I cannot get into details now,” he added.
On the issue of funding challenges, the Vice President said: “We will explore other funding options like the President said in the State of National Address (SONA) and budget statement available with Ministry of Finance by among others encouraging local currency bond, already we managed to raised K13.6 billion, others may say this is small, but we might not borrow a lot of money while we attract interest,” he said.
The Vice President said the Tonse Alliance led government is very committed to walk the talk in all its promises it made during the campaign period.
Head of Presidential Delivery Unit and Chief Advisor to the President on Sustainable Development Goals and International Affairs, Colleen Zamba, said the sitting at BICC is going well in line with the three major aspirations namely, wealth creation, job creation and food security.
“We are now at problem solving stage, we have done a lot of project analysis, checking where there are bottlenecks to fast track delivery of these priority projects.
“The main work of these delivery Labs was hinging on planning, prioritizing and performance managing which will lead to reach a delivery line faster,” she said.
President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera launched the Delivery Labs at Capitol Hill on 18th October with a major aim of delivering to Malawians in line with the leadership promised to Malawians.
The Delivery Labs are operating at BICC have been divided into four main clusters of, Agro Industry Transformation: through investment, Trade and food system transformation and another cluster is Digitalization Governance and finally Human Capital: Health and Education, and Infrastructure: Transport and Energy.