Punjab Government Hosted an Inaugural Session for its Newly Established Building for Directorate General Monitoring & Evaluation at Lahore

Friday, April 13, 2018

Directorate General Monitoring & Evaluation, Planning & Development Department Punjab hosted an inaugural session for its newly established floors in Bureau of Statistics (BOS) building at Johar Town Lahore. Punjab Chairman P&D Board Muhammad Jahanzeb Khan inaugurated the 4th and 5th floor of DGM&E Office. Secretary P&DD Iftikhar Ali Sahoo, Dr. Zahir Shah Advisor, Infrastructure Development Punjab, Director General BOS Sajid Rasool, Director PERI Dr. Mumtaz Anwar and others officials attended the ceremony. Tabjeel Ashraf Cheema, Director General (M&E) expressed his gratitude for the Chairman P&D Board and Secretary P&D Department for the current interventions of strengthening of this Directorate General for effective and efficient implementation of M&E activities across the province. He stated that the whole team of the Directorate General worked with professional integrity for transforming the current Monitoring & Evaluation System, to ensure transparent & independent Monitoring, Evaluation, Impact Assessments and TPV of public sector development projects.

Chairing the inaugural session, Chairman P&D Muhammad Jahanzeb Khan said that the Directorate General is in the process of transforming under the new leadership of Director General (M&E) and expressed his high expectations for working as a central part for providing guidance on devising efficient indicators for achievement of development goals of the Province. The organization is equipped with qualified and experienced employees and the organization will be able to work on finding needs, identifying problems & various roles in the global context and pick the role & responsibilities most viable for the development in Provincial context. He added that monitoring the progress and the evaluations of development projects conducted by the organization will enable the public to identify the major outcomes and impact of the interventions.

Addressing the participants, Iftikhar Ali Sahoo Secretary P&DD appreciated the current accomplishments of the organization and stated that DGM&E is an integral part of Planning and Development Department. The current interventions for strengthening of DGM&E will enable the Province to reap maximum future benefits from the M&E interventions and will provide an enabling environment for its employees. The internationally used best practices of M&E will be utilized to enable the Government to utilize credible and objective evidence from M&E in planning, budgeting, organizational improvement, policy review, as well as for performance improvement of on-going Annual Development Programme, Sahoo added.

Addressing on the occasion, Dr. Zahir Shah, Advisor Infrastructure Development Punjab highlighted that the team of the Directorate General is implementing M&E activities across the province with maximum dedication. He added the overall improvement to the M&E system will require the retention of currently employed staff, utilizing their sector knowledge & skills, creating capacity building activities and adoption of digitalized systems for conducting M&E practices. Sajid Rasul, Director General, BOS also shared his views on the collective effort of line departments for development objectives. Chairman P&D agreed and further guided about the SNE process of the Capacity building Project of DGM&E through proper channel with the retention of existing staff. At last, the chairman along with other participants of the session visited the offices of the employees. DG (M&E) concluded the session with vote of thanks.