COTABATO CITY – The Bangsamoro Economic and Development Council’s (BEDC) Regional Project Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (RPMECom) successfully held its first regular meeting on Thursday, November 19, at Bajau Hall, Office of the Chief Minister, Bangsamoro Government Center, this city.
RPMEC’s first regular meeting was presided by BARMM Executive Secretary Abdulraof Macacua, the Committee Chair and Minister of BARMM’s Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (MENRE), together with Engr. Mohajirin T. Ali, Macacua’s Co-Chair and Director General of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority (BPDA).
Minister Macacua said the committee needs to come up with a monitoring and evaluation approach that will not only provide a framework for improving or facilitating project implementation.
“This will also help to promote our thrusts on moral governance through transparency and accountability by providing information or report showcasing the project and program development or a scheme that does not only reveal mistakes and deficiencies but recommends opportunity for learning and improvements,” Macacua stressed.
Macacua added the RPMECom meeting is a must to implement the mandate of the Bangsamoro Organic Law.
Also present during the meeting were representatives from the Ministry of Interior and Local Government (MILG), Technical Management Services – Office of the Chief Minister (TMS-OCM), Bangsamoro Treasury Office (BTO), and the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority (BPDA).
During the deliberation on the Committee House Rules, Mr. Nasser P. Ibrahim of the TMS-OCM recommended to the committee to add the MILG and other related ministries for the coordination of RPMECom.
The members of the committee agreed to revised the terms or sentence of the content of Rule No. 1, Section 4, which states the unresolved problems and issues at the committee level will be elevated to the BEDC.
Furthermore, the members of the committee suggested adding a section in the Committee House Rule No. 2, Section 6 or the Regional Project Monitoring Team. The team is composed of the committee member’s representatives who will be responsible for conducting the actual monitoring on the ground.
The BPDA as the technical secretariat revised the Committee House Rules duly recommended by the committee.
Engr. Ali suggested making a resolution that will create a Technical Working Group (TWG) coming from the members of the committee.
“The TWG will look on the Regional Project Monitoring and Evaluation System (RPMES) of the defunct ARMM that will serve as our reference that can be adopted in formulating the Regional Policies and Guidelines on Monitoring and Evaluation and let the team present it during the second regular meeting,” Ali said.
The ministries who are members of the TWG will provide permanent focal persons who would automatically represent their ministry during the conduct of RPMECom meetings. Meanwhile, MILG-BARMM OIC Director Engr. Khalid Dumagay suggested creating a portal for the list of project proposals of the BARMM Government. (Lovella Lao-Lastimosa, IKMD, BPDA-BARMM)