Govt must order an immediate audit of CDF usage

By Daily Revelation Editor 

President Hakainde Hichilema must be commended for having come up with a programme to enhance the Constituency Development Fund in the country, where all the constituencies have a fair amount of resources allocated towards them.

The CDF allocation currently stands at over K30.6 million per constituency, and the President indicated during his speech to parliament last Friday that the same will be increased in the 2025 national budget.

It cannot be argued that the idea to spread the management of CDF to the constituencies rather than having the same managed locally was a good idea in terms of decentralising resources around the country.

However, before rolling out such a programme it was important to put in place sufficient guardrails against abuse of this well intended facility. This is especially worrying given the reports that are coming in from the constituencies on the rampant abuse of CDF. Besides those irregularities and abuses which have been reported, by ourselves and many others, we believe that that still represents a tiny fraction of the abuse that has come to light, as there is still much more than is yet to be uncovered.

We are sure that if a creditable audit were conducted, the same would uncover the rampant abuse that is currently happening around the country, where people are steadily using all the tricks in the book to line their pockets from stolen public resources.

We have received reports for instance of how those involved, be it council officials, constituency development committees, ward development committees and even some members of parliament are using their influence, in connivance with people in their circles to steal resources meant for the Zambian people.

We urge the UPND administration as a matter of urgency to order an immediate thorough audit of all the constituencies in the country on the CDF usage. We demand that this exercise should be carried out before the elections so that the Zambian people can be made aware of how this fund whose resource outlay has been significantly enhanced by the UPND administration has performed, and culprits brought before the law.

During his Parliamentary speech, President Hichilema, despite the many inconsistencies in the fight against corruption which many view as targeted towards the former leaders who served in the PF administration, re-affirmed that he was going to fight corruption, past, present and future. If he really means his words, there is already a gapping hole before him regarding the CDF usage.

Zambians demand to know how their resources are being utilised or abused. There are reports actually of influential people using their influence to determine those who should qualify to benefit from the CDF, and that the same is mostly going towards affiliated party cadres, and family members, friends and relations of the members of parliament and other officials in councils and on the committees.

Local government permanent secretary Maambo Hamaundu said no minister, member of parliament, permanent secretary and other officials associated with the management of CDF would be spared if wrongdoing where established on their part. But how will he know about the ones who are engaged in the same wrongdoing without an audit? He is talking about asking for a report over some irregularities for instance that were reported on from Chitambo, from the Chitambo Council. We are wondering how many reports he will order then, given that the abuse might actually be more widespread across the country. The simplest and easy way Hamaundu and those in government can actually ascertain the true extent of this abuse is by ordering an audit of all the constituencies if they are really interested in accountability.

You simply can’t send all that amount of money to a constituency in a country as corrupt as this one and expect that all of a sudden people who have been accustomed to nchekeleko will behave like Angels. They will definitely work out way to find loopholes to steal.