Councillors’ dormancy contribute to corruption —CCJP
Inactiveness of councillors is contributing to the looting of public resources, a Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) public expenditure tracking survey has exposed.
The Justice and Peace desk of Karonga Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, funded by Tilitonse through the Danish Church Aid, says unless councillors stand firm, more resources meant for the poor will not reach the beneficiaries.
Speaking during the presentation of a monitoring report to councillors in Karonga, Desk Officer for CCJP in the district, Louis Nkhata, said a number of projects financed through the Local Development Fund (LDF), District Development Fund (DDF) and Constituency Development Fund (CDF) remain uncompleted in Karonga despite disbursement of the funds by government.
‘’We have noticed a lot of abuse under the public development resources such as LDF and DDF in Karonga where construction of health centres at Galileya in Traditional Authority (T.A.) Wasambo, Thawiro and Wovwe in T.A. Mwirang’ombe are past deadlines.
“The projects stalled despite huge resources channeled [to them] by government,’’ observed Nkhata.
‘‘What we have observed through the project is that there is not much work done by our councillors, especially because they do not have interest to inspect on projects that are conducted in their areas,’’ he added.
However, councillors in the district have attributed the cause of the problem to lack of consultation by the secretariat.
‘‘As you know that councilors are new blood in the field, we do not know what transpired before us. There is no way that we can track what happened before us,’’ said chairperson for Karonga District Council, Ernest Mwalughali.
Nevertheless, he said the councillors will ensure that they follow up the issues raised by CCJP.
