Make Budget gender sensitive – Msiska

Secretary to the Cabinet Roland Msiska has called for gender mainstreaming in the 2015 national budget.

Mr Msiska said the national budget is a powerful tool that enables a country to meet the needs of all citizens most of whom are women and children.

He said this in Lusaka today when he officiated at a meeting for the Steering Committee of Permanent Secretaries on Gender to disseminate Gender Responsive Budgeting tools.

Mr Msiska said the Ministry of Gender and Child Development has developed a tool for gender responsive budgeting and urged line ministries to take advantage of the guidelines in order to make their budgets be sensitive to gender needs.

The Secretary to the Cabinet also directed members of the Steering Committee on Gender in all ministries to ensure that resources allocated to various programmes in 2015 will equitably respond to the special needs of women, girls, men and boys.

He said without equitable gender sensitive apportioning of resources in the budget, national programmes will not yield desirable results.

Mr Msiska noted that gender responsive budgeting will also help line ministries to improve accountability for national resources because programmes will be targeted thereby making budget tracking and monitoring relatively easy.

And speaking earlier, Ministry of Gender Permanent Secretary Daisy Ng’ambi expressed concern at the high number of ministries that are not engendering their plans and budgets.

She said the gender responsive tools that her ministry has developed are not being used by most of the line ministries.

Ms Ng’ambi urged all line ministries to ensure their 2015 plans and budgets are responsive to gender needs.