CDF most abused development fund: ‘DCs have no control on management of the funds’

The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is the most abused community development fund, Twambilire Mwabungulu District Civic Education Officer at the National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) Trust in Mulanje has said.

Makanga: DCs have no control on how the CDF funds are managed

Mwabungulu made the observation at the District Executive Committee (DEC) meeting on Friday when he made a presentation on the the Public Expenditure Tracking (PET) initiative the organization is doing.

“The evaluation that we did on how the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and the District Development Fund (DDF) are managed uncovered that the CDF was the most abused fund because of the political influence in the management of the fund,” said Mwabungulu.

He said an analysis and evaluation of expenditure reports and verification of procurement of reports uncovered a lot of irregularities in the way the fund was being managed.

“During our monitoring visits we uncovered for instance that there was little community participation in the decision making progress of project identification despite guidelines clearly outlining that the community has to be engaged in project identification,” said Mwabungulu.

He said the political structures in the project management were delaying project implementation and had also resulted into ghost projects that were syphoning government money year in and year out.

“The out come of using political structures in the management of the CDF has been loss of government money through substandard work, or in the worst scenario money going into the same project year in and year out,” said Mwabungulu.

Commenting the PET findings District Commissioner for Mulanje Charles Makanga said the CDF was a very sensitive program and the DCs had little control on the way funds under the program are managed.

“In principal the DC has control over the fund,but in practice we don’t have power over the way the funds and projects are managed, this is not a problem of Mulanje alone,” said Makanga.

He urged the civil society organisations to create more engagement with the communities and enlighten them on how they can hold their elected representatives accountable to government funds.

“The money that is being abused is government money, this is taxpayers money and we all have a responsibility to make sure that the funds are put to good use,” said Makanga.

The CDF concept was borrowed from Kenya where it has also had it’s controversies. Here at home the MPs openly denied to handle parliamentary businesses when finance minister Goodal Gondwe indicated that he wanted to get lid off the fund.

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#DzukaniAmalawi
#DzukaniAmalawi
5 years ago

Looting was made fashionable by DPP. Everyone and anyone has joined the bandwagon under the watch of Peter Mutharika

chatonda
chatonda
5 years ago

Please National Audit Office, come to audit mchinji North constituency because PP MP Rachel Mazombwe Zulu has abused all the CDF funds for campaign so that she can be accepted back to mcp. She has three people in her house who are all campaigning for position of mp and they are all using the CDF instead of development projects. There literally nothing to show for the entire 9 years she has been mp. She was beaten and chased last week because people are very angry with her. She has been banned from holding any Meeting in the constituency.

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