E-Government division national coordinator Dr Martine Mtonga says the implementation of e-government has intensified security as well as reduced the cost of holding cabinet meetings.
When he paid a courtesy call on Eastern Province permanent secretary Chanda Kasolo yesterday, Dr Mtonga said all Cabinet ministers have been trained in e-government.
“The highest decision making body in the country is the Cabinet and the Cabinet is paperless. This has saved a lot of resources. Previously for us to do Cabinet meetings for the whole year, it used to cost us K68 million and we have reduced that by 85 per cent,” he said. “So we are spending very little, we are spending less than K20 million for Cabinet meetings. It was very costly because each Cabinet meeting for example, we used to spend 20 reams of paper.”
He said they used to use four toners just to print Cabinet Memorandum.
“Today, we don’t go through that anymore. When the Cabinet Memo is done, we just send it into the Electronic Cabinet and it comes out on the tablet like that,” Dr Mtonga said.
“So we don’t have to send drivers out there, messengers to go and distribute. But as well it has enhanced security for our government documentation and efficiency is massive. Security is enhanced in the sense that our messengers don’t lose documents. From January when we started electronic cabinet up to now, we had another cabinet meeting last Thursday, there has never been a cabinet leak.”
He also said the electronic pay slip had performed wonders.
“It’s assumed in the country that we have 209,000 government workers who are on government payroll outside the service wings but as at 30th September 2018 we have captured 198,000 on e-pay slip,” Dr Mtonga said.
“That has done a massive saving for the government. We have saved from K72 million to zero. E-pay slip is now stopping fraud.”
He also handed over a Nissan Hard body valued K270,000 to the e-government department in the province to ease transportation problems. Earlier, Kasolo said Dr Mtonga was in the province to assist with compliance for the e-system.
Kasolo cited Chipata District Hospital as an example of a paperless institution.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Christopher Miti
Quelle/Source: The Mast, 10.09.2018
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