Lack of capacity in councils worries PAC

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has expressed worry over capacity challenges in the country’s district councils where many people in key positions are working in acting capacity.

PAC chairperson, Mark Botoman said this today after meeting officials from the Kasungu Municipal Council and Nkhotakota District Council who appeared before the committee to answer queries on the 2019-2020 Auditor General’s report.

“As a committee, we continue to be worried about capacity challenges in councils. Interfacing with the Kasungu Municipal Council and Nkhotakota District Council, you observe that we have serious capacity challenges in these councils. Most positions in these councils are in acting capacity,” Botoman said.

He added that it was difficult to understand whether the queries that were submitted to them or which were observed by the auditor general, were as a result of these capacity challenges or it was sheer negligence.

Botomani has since called on government to capacitate the councils. 

Botomani said the issues will continue to happen unless government steps in to resolve them. 

“We have observed these to be serious challenges. It’s the same with most districts that we have interfaced with. Some of the key positions are in acting capacity and that poses a big challenge in terms of service delivery to the people,” he said.

Kasungu Municipal Council had five queries of which the most critical issue was that of non-responsiveness in getting the receivables worth K91 million under property rates.

The council’s chief executive officer, Isaac Mkandawire, admitted that they have had challenges collecting the arrears from the residents.

He said the challenge was a result of strained relationships between the municipality and the residents, adding that the residents initially did not fully understand the issues of ground rates as well as property rates.

Said Mkandawire: “I believe that from now onwards, as they have an understanding of what ground rates and property rates are, we should be able to improve on that. And at the same time, we’ve also put in place some strategies to ensure that we collect enough of those city rates and property rates mostly by improving service provision because we want people to see that we are ploughing back to the citizens and the residents.”

On the other hand, Nkhota-kota District Council was queried on an unplanned procurement of K18 million and the district commissioner (DC), Ben Matengeni Tono attributed the anomaly to laxity in control systems at the time.

He, however, assured that they managed to retrieve the procurement plan and submitted it to the auditor general for review.

Nkhotakota District council was also queried on why they under-collected revenue by K206 million in the 2019/2020 financial year. The DC attributed this to lack of amenities such as toilets and waste bins in the markets which would motivate business people to utilise the facilities.

He said they have since constructed these sanitation facilities, adding that as a result, the market fees were revised from K100 to K200 which led to an improved revenue collection of K174 million in the 2020/2021 financial year.
The council however also attributed a number of their challenges to capacity challenges as observed by the chairperson.