Members of Parliament have accused district councils of misusing Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Legislator for Nsanje Lalanje Gladys Ganda said most members of Parliament are not happy with the way CDF is being utilized by councils.
According to Ganda, in Nsanje district CDF were used to pay compensation to vendors.
“We thought that CDF is Constituency development fund and it is supposed to be used for projects in Constituencies not to pay compensation to people, so we had to bring this issue to the Minister of Local Government so that he should find a way on how to address the issue,” said Ganda.
She added that there are also other reports of abuse of funds involving the council in Nsanje.
“Another issue is that about K3 million from Nsanje Lalanje went missing, that money was meant for to pay fees for students at Kalambo CDSS and the funds are not there, also about 7 million from Nsanje South was also missing but besides that there is also almost MK100 million that is also missing in Nsanje District council. My colleague who was a member of Parliament did ask for a forensic Audit and that has not been done. So as I speak now Nsanje is missing over MK100 million so we need to find out who took that money and anyone who took that money is supposed to face the law,” said Ganda.
In his response, Minister of Local Government Lingson Belekanyama said that his ministry is going to conduct meetings district by district with the district commissioners together with their director of planning, finance, public works and controlling officers to find out if the districts have similar concerns.
He added that the meetings with the DCs will be done in the presence of Members of Parliament.
“I know there are many problems than what people are saying in regards with CDF. To deal with this issue, we need a collective effort,” he said.
He added that there is a need to allow the ministry to come up with laws and guidelines that will help to guide the CDF going onwards and from the investigations they will start from 2014 reports to make sure that the issue is thoroughly investigated.
Additional Reporting by Martha Chikoti
