By Patson Chilemba
Kamfinsa member of parliament (PF) Christopher Kang’ombe says the K25.7 million budgetary allocation towards CDF has proved insufficient, urging that the figure should be raised to K100 per constituency, saying the K4 billion lost through mineral royalties could have supplemented for that.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Kang’ombe said the expectations on what he described as an insufficient CDF allocation was too much, which he said must be increased to K100 million per constituency in the 2023 national budget.
Asked where he thought the money should be drawn from to support such huge undertakings, Kang’ombe said there were people in the Ministry of Finance who get paid to find money.
“My role is not to go to parliament and start saying earn through this avenue. I can give my ideas on top of my head on which sources should be looked at. For instance mineral royalty tax was made tax deductible. Now by making it tax deductible we lost K4 billion in the 2022 national budget. Now that K4 billion, if government had not shifted policy on taxation that money would be sitting in the national budget. And what would have happened? We would have gotten CDF to K50 million because the K4 billion would have been shared in all the 156 constituencies,” Kang’ombe said. “So I am just giving ideas on top of my head but I think that in the Ministry of Finance, we have people that are tasked with the responsibility of identifying a priority. If CDF is a priority and we want it to impact on the people on the ground I think that government should task officers to deal with revenue collection. They should be able to come to parliament and say we have identified the following sources of income. We think parliament needs to support this proposal and then we will support them. We want to be part of the solution.”
Kang’ombe said it was frustrating that progress was not being made on things which needed to be done in the constituency, where if people for instance asked for a clinic they were told there were no funds for such projects.
He said the CDF process was cumbersome, owing to some challenges noticed in the administration of CDF, saying for instance in Kitwe, which has five constituencies, what has been happening is that the secretariat for CDF committee meetings comes from the council, who included the quantity surveyor, community development officer and someone from accounts.
Kang’ombe said this current scenario meant that the same secretariat would have to move from one constituency to the other on consecutive days, meaning that they would not do any work in any given week in any constituency as they will be loaded with applications from the communities, therefore no constituency had dedicated officers to deal with processing of applications.
He proposed to Local Government minister Garry Nkombo to employ CDF officers who were not employees of the council, where constituencies would not need to ask town clerks for instance to send officers like quantity surveyors to look at the figures, saying what was needed was officers employed specifically to support the processing of CDF.
Kang’ombe said the implication of not doing what he suggested was that the status quo would continue.
“We will continue. This is June we have not yet touched 2022 CDF and we have been told that if you don’t provide returns for the first quarter allocation you won’t get an allocation for the next quarter, meaning we will go into 2023 still discussing 2022 CDF. So that is my first proposal regarding CDF that government needs to employ through the Local Government Service Commission 156 CDF officers specifically to deal with processing of CDF,” Kang’ombe said.
He further said that the expectation from the public on CDF was too overwhelming against a fund which was not adequate, saying 60 percent was for projects while 20 percent was reserved for women and youth empowerment and then 20 percent for educational support, but the number of people applying for these funds are more than what the fund could support, with the mistaken view from many that all of sudden they would have tarred road and all the other miraculous activities through CDF.
Kang’ombe said his suggestion to increase CDF to K100 sounded like an exaggerated figure but it was something that would ably respond to the problems of infrastructure and other overwhelming applications for youths skills development, women empowerment and educational support.
On the issues of mining, Kang’ombe said he was aware that suppliers are not being paid in Kitwe as Mopani was having challenges with paying.
He said the Zambian leadership in Mopani has done very well under the circumstances, as mining requires continuous recapitalisation, urging government to state their position on recapitalisation of the mine.
“What is needed in Mopani, we have the synchronorium shaft which was sunk and we are able to get copper from there. We have the Mindolo shaft which was expanded, so we have areas where the copper can be extracted. What is needed now is just funds for operations, buy new equipment, get suppliers to be paid on time. So on Mopani the first thing that government must do is they should give us their thinking on recapitalisation,” Kang’ombe said. “What formula do they want to use to recapitalize Mopani? Do they want to bring an equity partner? Do they want to bring in another private player from outside? Or are they looking at allocating money in the national budget for 2023, inject maybe $60 million into Mopani to pay the contractors? They must tell us something that the6 are planning.”
He suggested that even now the government could bring to parliament a supplementary budget to inject into Mopani for operations and that would be supported as it would be dealing with urgent matters, as government looks for other avenues for recapitalisation.
He said the mine already had capable engineers who are running it, and that he was privileged to have worked for the same company for a number of years.
On the issue of KCM, where the government and Vedanta are going for arbitration, Kang’ombe said it was important to conclude on the process so that the company could get back on track.
Kang’ombe said Zambians were ably running Mopani and felt that the decision should be extended to KCM, “provided we do our housekeeping on recapitalisation”, saying it was that model that would determine whether the country would be able to proceed in that score or not.
He said everything was about priority, and if it was government’s priority to find funds for recapitalisation they could simply do that.
On the water problems in his Kamfinsa constituencies, Kang’ombe said the position given by Water and Sanitation minister Mike Mposha that water supply had been restored to 8-hours daily was not the actual position saying he was relying on information given to him by officials from Nkana Water and Sewarage Company who wanted to save their skin and that the situation was more dire than that. But the minister argued that Kang’ombe was not on the ground too and was just being fed the information he had. However, it was agreed that Mposha would conduct an on the spot check with Kang’ombe, and members of parliament for Nkana and Chimwemwe.
