By Isaac Zulu
Former Matero member of parliament Faustina Sinyangwe has said that the UPND government is being over ambitious by increasing the Constituency Development Fund in the 2023 national budget, without evaluating its impact in Constituencies in this year’s allocation.
Speaking in an interview, Sinyangwe explained that when she was a member of parliament local authorities used to face difficulties in utilising the Constituency Development Fund and wondered how it will be easy for the same local authorities to expend the increased CDF without facing any hurdles.
“I remember even during the time when I was member of parliament, local authorities used to find difficulties utilising the Constituency Development Fund. And with the increase in the CDF allocation, I don’t know if they will be able to use these funds within the given timeframe. We should also be mindful of the fact that if these funds are not spent within a certain period of time, they will be mopped up by the Treasury. We cannot even rule out the possibility of them failing to utilise these monies meant for project implementation in Constituencies, money gets mopped up by the Treasury and they disburse the recalled Constituency Development Fund,” Sinyangwe explained. “My thoughts are that what they should have done is to evaluate the impact of the 2022 Constituency Development Fund, look at how the women businesses that are beneficiaries of this programme have performed and look at suggestions for future improvements. But by the fact that they have decided to increase the CDF allocation without making an evaluation is being over ambitious.”
She noted that there is need to capacity build local authorities in order to enhance their ability to prudently utilise the Constituency Development Fund.
“I am not against the idea of giving out a lot of money for purposes of developing Constituencies, but this should be done systematically. Remember that this is October and yet local authorities are still disbursing the 2022 first quarter allocation to the recipients. And that is why I am saying that you need to build capacity in the councils and the ward development committes on the utilisation of the Constituency Development Fund,” Sinyangwe said. “The principles of project management require that you need to pilot a programme or project before its full implementation.”
She also expressed fear that the ward development committes might be infiltrated with political party cadres.
“The ward development committes have not received some training on CDF administration. And in the past, some of the party cadres were included to be part of the ward development committes. So even this time around, there could be pary cadres that might be incorporated in the ward development committes and Constituency Development Fund committes,” said Sinyangwe
