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The Citizens First (CF) Party leader, Harry Kalaba, has called for a total overhaul of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) structure and policy for it to be effective, efficient, transparent and accountable to the people.
Kalaba said the policy and structural changes should seek to improve administrative and capacities at all levels, Zonal, Ward, Constituency and Secretarial levels.
In an interview with Zambia Monitor in Lusaka on Monday, Kalaba proposed that each constituency should have independent and constituency dedicated engineers, social workers, economic planners, auditors and a monitoring team.
He stated that the composition of the Committees at all levels needed to have a secondment of qualified staff from line ministries such as, education, health, agriculture and social welfare.
“While we appreciate the history and significance of CDF, it is important to highlight the fact that the current CDF structure is unable to deliver the intended ambition of meeting the needs of the citizens,” Kalaba observed.
He stated that the Committee staff should be full time dedicated to the committees and all elected officials should be compensated for their time when dealing with CDF otherwise their work becomes pedestrian.
Kalaba proposed that the loan component of the CDF should be removed and directed to the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) as the Constituency does not have the capacity to deal with loans.
“That is misplaced. As it it who is paying back those loans? Can government tell us how that loan book is looking and how many people have paid back or actively doing so,” he said.
Kalaba stated that the banks tasked to handle loans on behalf of CDF would soon be crying about non performing loans and they would be making their demand from government.
He said the grants component should be made more transparent and non political and based on a National Registration Card (NRC) number being a control that whoever gets the funds irrespective of who they are or which party they belong to, should not qualify for another grant until 3 years.
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“The procurement process for CDF projects must be revised so as to make sure that the social and economic benefits remain in the wards and constituencies,” Kalaba said.
He argued that a failure to addressing some of these issues meant that CDF would continue to be nothing but another appendage on the UPND list of lies.
Kalaba stated that the party saw CDF as a process that should lead to full decentralization and would ensure that it created capacity for it in the quest to actualize full decentralization.
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