By Kondwani Magombo:
Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Dr. Ben Phiri, says all preparatory steps for the rollout of the reformed K5billion Constituency Development Fund are in place, with Constituency Development Committees (CDCs) formulated and key vacancies in councils filled.
The Minister said this during a joint press briefing held at the Central Office of Information (COI) in Lilongwe with Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Shadric Namalomba.
Phiri said the CDCs comprise all relevant stakeholders, including the clergy; civil society organizations; chiefs; councilors; and members of parliament, among others, adding that training on the Fund’s guidelines has already been done in all councils across the country.
He noted that most councils were operating with high vacancy rate, with directors in acting capacity but now permanent staff have been employed to fill the vacancies to enhance the CDF implementation.
“I’m pleased to say that for the first time in Malawi, all councils have qualified engineers,” explained Phiri, and he added: “A total of 687 direct jobs have been created, including recruitment of 228 accountants to work at constituency level.”
The Minister added that the Accountant General has already opened a CDF pool account with the Reserve Bank of Malawi, while the councils have also opened accounts with local banks to ease the funding processes.
According to Phiri, site visits to identified projects are conducted to determine the nature and scope of work and required bills of quantity.
“The projects that we are going to implement are those that are demand-driven and not supply driven,” said Phiri, adding: “We are also going to have a dashboard that will be showing the projects’ progress for everyone to see so that there’s transparency and accountability.”
The Minister stressed that the disbursement of funds under the reformed CDF will be performance based, a model borrowed from the World Bank-funded Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) that is being implemented in councils across the country.
Under the performance based model, councils that perform lowly do not get funds until they improve and satisfy the expected standards.
“The performance based approach is new to CDF but not new to the councils,” said Phiri, and he continued: “GESD projects implemented under the performance based approach have registered over 90 percent success rate, so it is a very effective approach.”
Meanwhile, all councils across the country have signed an Agreement with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), committing to fighting corruption during the implementation of projects under the CDF, according to the Minister.
Commenting on the outlined preparations, Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Shadric Namalomba, said the current government shall always uphold transparency and accountability in matters concerning public funds.
“I would like to assure the public that President Prof. Peter Mutharika is running a transparent government and that’s why we always update the nation on matters of public interest,” said Namalomba.
