PTF committed to transparency, accountability in managing COVID-19 funds

The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has reiterated its commitment to transparency and accountability in funds management.

The National Coordinator of PTF, Dr Sani Aliyu, told our reporter in Abuja, that the federal government launched two transparent dashboards to monitor the nation’s COVID-19 expenses and other responses.

“The PTF, in its continuous engagement with the private sector and donor community, developed an in-house excel based dashboard managed by the secretariat of the PTF that seeks to capture all donations to the COVID-19 response.

“Typically, donations by partners and donors may be presented directly to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Ministry of Health, other MDAs directly or to states,” he said.

Aliyu explained that the dashboard represented a central tracking tool that partners and donors fed into and tracks materials, equipment and human resources pledged by partners and what had been received.

The coordinator said that the donation tracker was regularly aligned and cross-referenced with data from NCDC and Ministry of health to ensure that it was as accurate as possible in reporting donations.

Aliyu said that the donations tracker also collects data and reports on financial inflows as reported by the office of the Auditor -General of the Federation though the COVID-19 support accounts.

“The Donations dashboard is linked to two transparency dashboards developed for the PTF.

“The first is the Incidence and Response Tracker Dashboard developed by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) and funded by the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG).

“And the second is the COVID-19 Resource Tracking Dashboard developed and funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“Both dashboard can be found online linked with the State House Website, www.statehouse.gov.ng/covid19/.

The Incidence and Response Tracker Dashboard – https://covid-19response.ng/dashboard

“The Incidence and Response Tracker Dashboard is deployed in support of the National COVID-19 Multi-Sectoral Pandemic Response Plan of the PTF,” he explained.

He also said that the dashboard was designed to provide real-time data to the federal and state governments, private sector, international organizations and other donors that intended to mobilize and provide human and material resources in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nigeria.

The address for the COVID-19 Resource Tracking Dashboard, he said, is https://ngcovid19resourcetracker.info/