Illogical increment in CDF allocation

By Daily Revelation Editor

The government has increased the budgetary allocation of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from K30.6 million to K36.1 million in the 2025 national budget.

Finance Minister, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, announced an increment from K4.8 billion to K5.6 billion, which would see each constituency receiving K36.1 million, up from K30.6 million in the current fiscal year.

The allocation in funding is not a bad thing for any undertaking in the country. But on the CDF allocation, the government should have exercised a lot of caution, especially with reports of serious abuse of resources currently happening in these constituencies.

There are credible reports that the CDF allocation is mainly going towards benefiting the administrators who are working over time to create loopholes on how to steal these resources. This media organisation has been reporting and bringing to light information on the various abuses happening in constituencies, where in some instances the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has actually opened up investigations on some abuses.

Musokotwane himself made mention of the fact that audits conducted have showed abuses and that stringent measures would be put in place to curb the same. However, despite mentioning the same abuses, there is actually no record anywhere where people involved in the abuses have been arrested or prosecuted. If the person who administers the national Treasury is saying there have been abuses, why hasn’t he mentioned the people involved in the abuses? Does he probably fear that if some constituencies where people are involved in abuse are mentioned, the same will open a can of worms with other fingers pointing towards constituencies he would not want to have mentioned?

We would have thought that the most responsible thing to do when there is abuse, would be first to undertake to address the abuse from the less that was allocated to avoid further abuse in the more that will be made available.

Allocating more funds to an area where people have mastered the art of stealing in order to eat is a very irresponsible way of managing public resources actually. Or has the government deliberately done the same aware that even if the allocation also goes to opposition constituencies where it is also being abused, majority of the funds will still go towards ruling party areas on account of the more members of parliament they have, and by extension more ruling party affiliated special interests that will stand to benefit from the same?

The whole decision to increase CDF allocation in the midst of abuse is illogical.