Lilongwe district extension workers asked to revamp committees

Lilongwe District Council with funding from the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) of the Lilongwe Archdiocese has trained extension workers from district in the development process.

Lilongwe District Council director of planning and development Douglass Moffat said during the closing ceremony on Friday that the role of extension workers is to advise area development committees at traditional authority (T/A) level on development issues.

“We have had conflicts between area extension committees [AECs] and area development committees [ADCs] because they did not know what is expected of them. We also noticed that people in many areas do not know about the existence of these committees and their roles, hence the training,” he said.

One of the participants, Emily Mazengera Chipata, said the training equipped them with knowledge on development that they will share with other people.

Lilongwe CCJP project officer Mwai Sandram said it is high time councillors, chiefs, extension workers and community members realised their roles in the development processes.

The training was conducted under the Citizen Action in Local Government Accountability Project which CCJP is implementing in Lilongwe and Dowa districts with funding from the Tilitonse Fund and Dan Church Aid. n