The following anonymous comment was received in response to the posting on how PEPFAR country operational plans are supposed to be shared with civil society before they are submitted.

Jamie

++++++++++++++++++

I too hope the new COP will be discussed, not only shared, with civil society before submission.

Will PEPFAR will continue to fund PSI in the next Country Operational Plan, which has received millions through the last few years for HIV activities? The USAID Office of Inspector General released a report last September that was very critical of the PSI project in Myanmar. Key findings include:

USAID or PSI cannot say that the project is reducing morbidity and mortality related to HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB at the national level.
The majority of the project’s local partners interviewed said PSI did not provide enough capacity building or technical assistance to equip them to take on project activities.
Local partners said double counting of clients might have occurred, and audit testing confirmed an earlier mission assessment noting inconsistencies between the numbers reported by partners and their supporting documentation.
PSI was not doing enough to build the capacity and sustainability of local partners. A representative of one local partner said PSI feared losing business to local organizations.
Despite terminating a local partner for fraud in Burma, PSI did not give other partners fraud awareness training to share the lesson learned. PSI seemed to compartmentalize the incident and the response to it.
Measuring and attributing reductions within the targeted populations are difficult because of limitations of surveillance data and the project’s weak and unreliable monitoring systems.
Mission officials doubted whether PSI would be able to turn the project around given its record of performance.

The report link is at:  https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/audit-reports/5-486-14-004-p.pdf