The Citizen Engagement Committee (CEC) has proposed that disbursement of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) should be on performance basis.
Chairman for the committee Willy Kambwandira told The Atlas that this will help to improve management of resources for the responsive service delivery in all constituencies.
“It’s a good call to makesure that the CDF is tied to performance based grants because this will push Authorities in local constituencies to work extra hard to accomplish different projects so that they keep appearing on the list to receive the Constituency Development Fund and also it can improve Accountability in constituencies.
“I think by making it performance based, we can make great progress in developing the nation, for example, Lilongwe District Council has 9 constituencies which means they are getting about MK1.9 billion which is a lot of money if properly used,” said Kambwandira
Kambwandira further said there’s need to set some conditions for a constituency to be qualified to access the Performance Based Grants.
Commenting on the matter, Chair on the Parliamentary Committee on Budget and Finance Gladys Ganda who is also Nsanje Lalanje legislator welcomed the development but said it needs to be discussed and analysed in Parliament before being implemented.
“CDF is the fund for Malawians, that’s Public resources as such any suggestions to have CDF as performance based fund it’s a welcome development.
“Nevertheless, we need to have a thorough analysis of how that can be implemented because as you are aware CDF is of the same amount to each and every constituency regardless of the number of people you look after, as long as it’s a constituency you get same amount so it’s an issue of sitting down and see how best that can be handled but if it’s something that will add value to the developments in the constituencies, then it’s a welcome development,” said Ganda
