A five-year-old programme to build capacity, CBR (Capacity Building for Results), is 11 months away from ending but a Killid investigation reveals it has no chance of achieving its aim.
The programme spread over five years set out in 2012 to strengthen the working capacity of government employees to deliver standard services to people. Project officials hope it will be renewed and they will have time to finish what they had set out to do.
Only a third of the budget has been spent – project implementation was delayed first by problems in hiring staff, followed by repeated cycles of presidential elections in 2014 that meant serious work only started in 2015.
Killid which studied the documents has found that the staff who are responsible for both the design and implementation of CBR were not recruited under the rules laid down by bill numbers 38 and 41 of the council of ministers.
Neither has decision number 274 of the parliamentary committee on legislative affairs been taken into consideration in recruitments. Some Members of Parliament (MPs) and employees (dismissed from work) allege heads of government offices have handed out jobs in CRB to their own people.
The project is jointly run by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the commission of administrative reforms and civil services. Its estimated budget was 350 million USD. The promised budget for the first phase of 100 million USD was paid by the World Bank-administered ARTF (Afghanistan Rehabilitation Trust Fund), which provides budgetary support and finances grants for national government projects supported by a global partnership.
The general goal was to recruit and train staff for 1,500 posts and ensure their financing in different government offices by end-2017 but the CBR has been able to fill only 820 posts in offices. Najibullah Wardak, MoF chief of CBR, will not let the obvious failure in realising the goal over a five year period dampen his optimism about the programme. “When we see that recruitment has taken place and the planned budget has not been spent,” he says, “this gives us the possibility of continuing for three or five more years with political support from a high level and the commitment of ministries to reforms.”
