Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) has revealed that Members of Parliament (MPs) across the country use party structures to implement projects under Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
This has been shown in MEJN 2017 Public Expenditure Tracking Report presented on Tuesday in Malawi’s Capital City, Lilongwe.
According to the report, some Area Development Committees (ADCs) are still neglected in the implementation of the community projects and instead MPs use party members to identify and implement the community projects which are supposed to be undertaken by ADCs.
“The monitoring found that most ADCs do not have an idea of the CDF projects that are being implemented in their communities.
“The Members of Parliament were seen to be managing the CDF resources with party structures, sidelining ADCs that are supposed to participate in the implementation of the fund,” reads the report.
According to the report, CDF guidelines provides for every constituency to have a constituency committee which brings together Councillors, MPs and ADCs to discuss the implementation of the CDF.
“CDF guidelines provides for ADCs to sign on the project application form and remain key in the implementation process,” says the report.
On success of CDF, MEJN has said that there are cases that CDF is doing quite so well where ADCs are left to manage CDF to implement projects that are in line with the priorities.
“ADCs and Councillors now have an idea of the CDF projects that are being implemented in their communities,” says the report.
Meanwhile, MEJN has called for the need to ensure constituency committees are instituted and enforced in all constituencies and that these committees manages the implementation of the CDF among others.
The report has been released based on cases from Rumphi, Karonga, Mchinji, Ntcheu, Zomba and Blantyre districts.
In the 2016/17 financial year, each constituency was given K18 million as CDF.
