Good public services to the people

Public Expenditure Tracking - PET – a method to secure better services to Tanzanians

Isdory Phocus advice NGO’s to team up to participate in PET – Public Expenditure Tracking.

“To make a long story short, PET is a method to track the public money flow from the main source to the end service provider and see if the goals have been fulfilled by the service provider” says Isdory Phocus from Tanzania Youth Coalition, who participated in a one week work shop on PET arranged by TANGO and UNDP.
“Say you have a hospital in one district which by its nature is obliged to carry out a good service to the citizens, but the service and quality are in fact inadequate. PETS can be a help to scrutinize cash flow, spending and quality of services where audits only look at what have been spend in the districts.“

Teaming up is necessary

However, to scrutinize public expenditure is not an easy task. Why would district authorities and service providers be interested in giving access to accounts etc., or at all revealing anything even though they have nothing to hide?

Isdory says:
- You need to have strong governmental relations and communicate well what you intend to do, in particular with the District Executive Director (DED), and make clear what the benefits are of such an investigation and how the result will be presented.
- It is also very important to team up with others CSOs. Preferably with someone who has done PETS before like HakiElimu or TGNP (Tanzania Gender Network Programme), he continues.
It’s not a surprise that Isdory believes it’s the responsibility of CSOs to supervise development strategies, follow up on them and see if the citizens benefit from the promises. Right now, according to Isdory, the advantage is that government policies and MKUKUTA have a focus on budget transfers - which means the time is ripe for such investigations.