Influence of Project Funding on Implementation of Government-Funded Projects in Imenti North Sub-County, Meru County

Monitoring and evaluation is a critical component of project design, execution, and management. Kenyan county administrations have been carrying out development projects since 2013


INTRODUCTION
Government-funded projects are very plainly important in ensuring equal times, one can get money and social and demarcated progress among all the counties of a devolved system. (County Annual Development Plan [CADP], 2020; Micah & Luketero, 2017). Considering this, nations are globally concerned about how best they can successfully implement their various projects by employing a variety of mechanisms to ensure better performance of successive projects (Kaberia & Mburugu, 2019). Some of the strategies adopted across many nations are increasing project funding, project planning, strategic planning, implementing project lifecycle phases, partnering with other international organisations, monitoring and evaluation, training and budgeting (United Nations Programme HIVD/AIDS, 2009; Kaberia & Mburugu, 2019;Ngigi, 2020). These strategies have been proven to bear fruits upon well-carried-out and finished off various projects by faith-based, nongovernmental and even government-owned organisations.
This study defined Government-funded projects as time-bound planned endeavours financed by the national government, which appoints a project management team to oversee their development with adherence to the set objectives, goals, expectations, resources, and timeframe (Lynch et al., 2015). Successful execution of governmentfunded projects implies meeting or exceeding the demands, objectives, and duties of the government project by achieving the desired outcomes as outlined in the project action plan (Enkhtur, 2019;De-Silva & Weerasinghe, 2015). It also entails the arrival of the project's intended purpose under the set budget, time, quality, intended scope and other resource constraints to serve the purposed clients adequately).
Project management tools have a critical part in the successful completion of government-funded projects, as evidenced by success criteria that demonstrate their application. Other potential indicators are vested in the ability of a project to meet customer's needs, satisfy the intended users, achievement of the intended technical descriptions, earning of revenues and net benefits and gain a competitive advantage over other sectors (Chaplowe & Cousins, 2015;Singh et al., 2017). Other dimensional techniques that demonstrate the successful execution of government-funded projects include project timeliness, production efficiency, quality, and cost-effectiveness (Kihuha, 2018;Kaberia & Mburugu, 2019). Furthermore, project checking and watching procedures contribute to a greater proportion of the rate that is coming to a good ending.
Investing in internal and external mechanisms for realising successful project implementation fundamentally has caused nations to bear numerous benefits. These include the achievement of high performance among projects, development of project management staff, economic development, a rise in the people's living standards and achievement of customer satisfaction (Waithera & Wanyoike, 2015;Kaberia & Mburugu, 2019). This further enables the attainment of the project's intended purpose, ends to ends and coverage of the undertaking, achievement of project transparency as well as accountability, compliance to standard guidelines, achievement of quality and stewardship of project resources is realised.
Monitoring and project evaluation practices have been employed both internationally, regionally, and even locally to achieve productive and effective implementation of government projects. This is due to the fact that the tool has facilitated accountability, assessment, and evaluation of projects' progress, whereby encountered and even anticipated shortfalls are rectified through appropriate remedies (Mugo & Oleche, 2015;Omwaka & Wanyoike, 2016). This study assessed project funding, competencies of the project manager, employee capacity building, and community participation, closely checking and following up mechanisms and political goodwill practices in the well-carried-out government-funded project in Imenti North Sub-County.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Project success is a valuable outcome that anyone who has invested time, human, financial, material, infrastructure and facility resources expects (De-Silva & Weerasinghe, 2015). Strategies aimed at achieving the desired outcomes upon project completion are therefore in the minds of any project management team. Government-funded project management stakeholders, as stated by Mbijiwe et al. (2019), also acknowledge this by offering controlling tools which monitor the planning, execution, implementation and controlling stages of their projects. These tools help to attain successful installation and implementation of the projects.
In the twenty-first century, national governments and individual organisations have invested heavily in ensuring the well-carried out and finishing of their projects. This is because successful project management undertakings contribute to the bridging of productivity gaps, economic development gaps and meeting the Vision 2030 agenda (Kung'u & Gachunga, 2017). County governments are also doing so because of the substantial amounts of money disbursed to the various ministries to take care of the government projects underway (Mbijiwe, 2021). Such undertakings require the appointment of faithful stewards who will ensure accountability, transparency, timely project completion and effectiveness of the end products of the government projects (Mbijiwe et al., 2019). Such has been termed to be achieved by the investment in institutional based-mechanisms such as organisational culture and organisational structures (Enkhtur, 2019). The project closely checking and following up are also among the globally accepted practices (Singh et al., 2017). These practices are vital in achieving successful project implementation.
Government executes various projects as a way of boosting countries economy. Successful execution of government-funded projects implies the arrival to, or achievement of government project's needs, objectives, and obligations by realising the desired outcomes as dictated by the project action plan over the stipulated timeframes (Enkhtur, 2019;De-Silva & Weerasinghe, 2015). It also entails the arrival of the project's intended purpose under the set budget, timeframe, desired quality, intended scope and other resource constraints (Lynch et al., 2015;Ngigi, 2020). When a project meets the intended purpose, it serves the purpose of clients adequately.
Closely checking and following up have been embraced as featured in a number of studies. However, project's success and performance among the NGO-funded, CDF-funded, and even county government-funded projects are still experiencing completion and implementation inconsistencies (Okuta, 2019; Kioko, 2017;Njama, 2015;Kihuha, 2018;Okuta et al., 2019;Kung'u & Gachunga, 2017;Mcheluel et al., 2017;Kihuha, 2018;Kerubo, 2021;Boss & Wanyoike, 2018). It is also clear that not all closely checking and following up processes have been investigated in order to eliminate the foul situation that is impeding accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness, as well as project cost overruns, bad fiscal allocation, and poor project targeting. The state of effective execution of government-funded projects through the use of closely checking and following up methodologies in Imenti North Sub-County is yet unknown. This gap ushered this current study an opportunity to interrogate closely checking and following up, including; project funding, competencies of project manager, employee capacity building, community participation and political goodwill practices in the well-carried out and finished project of the government in Imenti North Sub-County.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study adopted the descriptive cross-sectional survey research design to investigate closely checking and following up on well-carried out and finished government-funded projects in Imenti North Sub-County, Meru County in Kenya. The targeted workers were drawn from five departments in Imenti North Sub-County. The selected department includes Finance and Economic Planning, Roads and Infrastructure, Education, Health Services and Efficiency Monitoring Unit. The sample size determination table by Krejcie and Morgan (1970) was utilised to establish the sample size from a total population of 113 staff.
The formula is: Therefore, the application of this formula and checking the sample size determination table will provide a sample size of 92 staff. To select the 92 staff, a proportionate stratified sampling technique was applied to obtain numbers from each department. To gather data from the sampled respondents, a questionnaire and an interview guide were used in this study. Qualitative data came from the few open-ended questions in the questionnaires and also from recordings from when the researcher was interviewing key informants. Identified themes formed categories which were used in the discussion. Qualitative findings were reported through narration and excerpts of the themes, while quantitative information was presented using tables and figures.

Response Rate
This study majored in 5 departments of Imenti North Sub County, Meru County. Therefore, in this section, the response rate of the five departments comprising finance, transport, education, health services and M & E is provided in Table 1. The findings in Table 1 show the response rate of staff members from five departments in Imenti North Sub County Meru County. The total target population was 113 staff members, and the sample size was 92. The study received valid questionnaires from 76 staff members, representing a response rate of 83%. The highest response rate was recorded in the education department with 90%, followed by the M&E department, with 88%. The finance department had a response rate of 86%, while the transport and health services departments recorded response rates of 74% each. As for the Heads of the department, the study had intended to interview all five, but only four were available, representing an 80% response rate.
The response rates of 83% and 80% for staff and HODs, respectively, are considered efficient in the analysis based on the recommendation of Creswell (2014), Kothari (2009), and Mugenda and Mugenda (2003), who described a response rate of 75% as adequate for analysis. The high response rate was attributed to the effective planning and implementation of the data collection process, as well as the willingness of the study participants to provide responses.

Results on Successful Implementation of Government-funded Projects
The successful implementation of governmentfunded projects was the dependent variable in this study. In assessing this variable, several sentiments on the successful implementation of governmentfunded projects were presented to respondents on a 5-level Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (SD) to strongly agree (SA). The statements presented to respondents were based on identified indicators, including timely completion of projects, cost, standard, scope of the project, quality, community involvement, and staff training. Mean values and standard deviations for each statement were computed to help in interpreting descriptive findings. This approach aided in assessing the latent variable of successful implementation of government-funded projects by consolidating respondents' views on the various indicators. The findings are presented in Table 2.
157 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  22 .932 Table 2 shows the results of staff's statements regarding the implementation of governmentfunded projects. The findings indicate that staff had a moderate agreement level on finishing projects on time indicating that the projects were well carried out and finished (mean = 3.92; SD = 1.055), this can be linked to the response provided by the head of department. "According to the project status report, county projects are reported to be at a 60% completion rate". The moderate agreement level on finishing projects on time suggests that staff generally believe that projects were well carried out and finished. This implies that the 60% completion rate mentioned in the project status report reflects the successful implementation and completion of a significant portion of the county projects. The completion rate indicates progress and suggests that a substantial number of projects have been completed within the expected timeframes. Also reported The-2015-County-Performance-Report), 80% of county initiatives reported a successful implementation rate, with an average time frame of 11-14 months. This implies that the completion rate of 60% mentioned in the project status report falls within expectations. Nevertheless, the standard deviations of some statements were relatively high, indicating that there were some observable variations in opinions among the staff regarding the implementation of government-funded projects, which could mean that the successful implementation of projects varied with departments.
It is important to note that some staff expressed dissatisfaction with the implementation of government-funded projects. Observing the scope of the projects when delivering them (mean = 3.36) and delivering the project according to the quality that has been agreed upon (mean = 3.58). Moreover, the staff reported a low agreement level on finishing projects within the agreed cost (mean = 3.14), which may indicate that there were budget constraints or cost overruns during the implementation of government-funded projects. On the same accord, Ntseane (2013) noted through survey results from the staff which revealed that only 17.7% of staff strongly agreed that the project was completed within the agreed budget. In addition, 8(10.5%) staff felt that finishing projects on time did not indicate a well-carried-out and finished project, and 23 (30.3%) staff felt that the delivery of a project did not meet the quality agreed upon with the parties involved in the work this aligns with the specific example provided by respondent 02 during the interview. In the example of the Thimagiri market, it is stated that the market is complete but not in use by the citizens. Additionally, it is mentioned that the market was built adjacent to another already completed NAO-built market, and yet, there is another major market located three kilometres away. Both of these existing markets are nonutilised. These circumstances reflect a lack of achievement of the objectives set for the project, a potential waste of funds, and a lack of community involvement.
The non-utilisation of the Thimagiri market, despite its completion, suggests that the project did not meet the expected quality standards or failed to fulfil the needs and priorities of the community. This dissatisfaction among staff members regarding the quality of project delivery corresponds to the specific instance of the Thimagiri market. This scenario highlights a potential discrepancy between the perceived quality of implementation and the actual outcomes of government-funded projects.

Summary
Successful implementation of government-funded projects was the dependent variable. The affirmative responses from the staff on all the factors (project funding, competencies of a project manager, employee capacity building and community participation) and the interplay of political goodwill indicated that they wedged weighty influence on the successful implementation of government-funded projects in Imenti North Sub County, Meru County. The findings revealed that staff generally had a moderate level of agreement on finishing projects on time, indicating that the projects were well carried out and completed. This aligns with the reported 60% completion rate mentioned in the project status report, reflecting the successful implementation of a significant portion of the projects. However, there were variations in opinions among staff, suggesting that successful implementation varied across departments. Some staff expressed dissatisfaction with aspects such as observing project scope, delivering projects according to agreed quality, and finishing projects within the agreed cost, indicating potential challenges like budget constraints or cost overruns.

Conclusions
The study noted a significant influence of project funding on successful government project implementation. The study noted that adequate funding is key for successful government project implementation. Reliable revenue streams, standards, best practices, and a well-designed financial plan in project management are essential in ensuring the successful implementation of projects that are financed by the government. Besides, transparent financial reporting practices, efficient budgetary control, and effective financial resource management are also key in ensuring the smooth execution of government projects and the achievement of the desired outcomes.

Recommendations Based on the Findings of the Study
The recommendations arising from the study's findings were organised according to the variables of the study.

Recommendations on Project Funding
The significance of project funding in shaping the successful implementation of government-funded projects in Imenti North Sub County, Meru County, cannot be overstated. The study recommends the government allocate sufficient funding at the project's inception, taking into account capital investments, operational costs, and contingency reserves, while staffs ensure transparent financial reporting practices, accurate and timely records of project expenses and progress reports.