By Brenda Nkosi
Blantyre, Mana: National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) Trust has rolled out a Governance Monitoring Platform Project that will track adherence to Covid-19 preventive measures and Gender Based Violence (GBV) in the country.
Nice Trust Executive Director, Ollen Mwalubunju disclosed the development during a training of volunteers that would work on project indicators at Lunzu in Blantyre.
“Having successfully utilized Information, Communication Technology (ICT) framework in elections, we thought of widening our scope by looking at other national issues to track government progress.
“We are launching an early warning system to track incidences of Covid-19 restrictions to help government monitor if everyone is adhering to the set guidelines,” he said, adding that the platform would look at incidences of GBV in communities.
The NICE Trust is expected to work with volunteers that will provide information so that relevant sector should intervene on issues such as GBV.
“Since our volunteers are in communities, they will be getting hold of the information on GBV and alert us so that relevant interventions are introduced,” Mwalubunju said.
Nice Trust will have a small intervention room with stakeholders like the police and health personnel to respond to the issues promptly.
“We are setting up an intervention room in Lilongwe that will have all the relevant sectors so that the feedback is used accordingly for the success of government initiatives,” Mwalubunju said.
Nice Trust will encourage citizen journalism that looks at issues surrounding GBV and Covid-19 adherence
A participant to the training, Gloria Mphepo said the training was an eye opener on how to use phones to report on Covid-19 and GBV to NICE Trust.
“We have been trained so that we can ably use the indicators we will use in reporting to the control room that is being set up,” she said.
NICE Trust is implementing the Governance Monitoring Platform Project with funding from the Malawi Government, UN Women and European Union.
