Govt’s accountability program kicks off in Kabul

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Afghanistan National Standard Authority (ANSA) presented its performance report of last one year during the government’s first accountability conference. The government’s accountability program was created 14 years ago under former president, Hamid Karzai, and is aimed at presenting performance reports by government organs to the media and people.
This year’s accountability program of the government was started in Kabul and it would continue for 40 days. Waheed Omar, president’s advisor in public and strategic affairs, talking to the first accountability conference, asked spokespersons and officials of ministries and independent organs to present their brief reports of performance relating to 1399 solar year to the media based on the schedule.
The Afghanistan National Standard Authority (ANSA) today presented its last year’s performance report to the conference. Aziz Ahmad Ahmadzai, ANSA chief, said his organization spent 90 percent of general budget or 110 million afghanis and around 1.6 percent or 7.50 million afghanis of development budget in 1399 fiscal year. He said compiling 60 standards, signing cooperation agreement with Pine Nut Exporters’ Union, examining more than 74,000 wagons and fuel tankers on country’s borders and identification of more than 4,000 tons of sub-standard materials were the performance of the organ in the last one year. He said development of draft plans for specification of fees of different laboratories, creating procedures for standardization of fuel stations, work procedures for electronic equipment laboratories and some other tasks were other activities of ANSA.
Ahmadzai said they also had the plan to provide equipment for laboratory of construction materials, procurement of temperature control laboratories and adjusting high tonnage scales as well as accreditation of Kabul laboratories. However, he said that the mentioned projects were not implemented due to some reasons.