MPs demand K30m for constituencies

Some things never change. Despite a record high budget deficit, some members of Parliament (MP) appear determined to achieve self-preservation at the expense of national economic survival.

Nation on Sunday has learnt that the parliamentary budget cluster on Social and Community Affairs, Local Authorities (LAs) and Local Development wants the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to jump from K7 million to K30 million.

“The amount [K7 million] is too small considering the huge increase in prices that the country has experienced over the past two years,” according to minutes of the cluster’s meetings to scrutinise the sector’s budget, which we have seen.

The cluster of MPs wants this increase—a 328 percent jump—to be included in the K742 billion 2014/15 National Budget, which has a record high deficit of K107 billion.

CDF is one of the country’s largest sources of non-sector tied funding in a council, which the MPs directly control for the financing of what they say are pro-poor initiatives in a constituency.

But critics say CDF has become a political tool for serving legislators to maintain a grip on constituencies by using the fund’s resources to dish out financial favours to individuals and rewarding areas where the parliamentarians have strong voter support.

The fund’s effectiveness in improving service delivery has also come into question while scandals of financial mismanagement, abuse, misprocurement, weak project tracking as well as unnecessary politicisation of development initiatives by MPs have added to the scepticism.

In an interview yesterday, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe ruled out any possibility of increasing the CDF in the 2014/15 budget.

“It cannot be done, we are not increasing the total budget,” he said.

But if the parliamentarians get their way the increase could force government to look for an additional K4.4 billion as the CDF budget will rise from the current K1.4 billion, to K5.8 billion for all the 193 constituencies.

In an interview on Friday, the cluster’s chairperson Richard Chimwendo Banda confirmed his committee’s recommendation to increase the CDF to K30 million.

“The cost of implementing the projects in constituencies has gone up. Almost 60 percent of boreholes in the country are not functioning. We need money to implement projects in the constituencies,” he said.

Commenting on the new demands, director of Institute for Policy Research and Social Empowerment (IPRSE), Henry Chingaipe, who is a governance and development specialist, said looking at the needs of the constituencies, one would be justified to think and believe that the constituencies would easily absorb K30 million in a year.

“However, the track record in the management and implementation of CDF is rather poor and uninspiring. The story of CDF in all districts is littered with stories of abuse, unnecessary politicisation of development projects by MPs and the deepest deficit of accountability both for the money and for the results that the fund has achieved,” he said.

Chingaipe said CDF would be more meaningful if the implementation and operational framework were reformed to give more space to community structures and ward councilors in the management of the resources and projects.

“Furthermore, reforms should seek to insulate the fund from unnecessary partisan politicisation of CDF projects. The roles of MPs, community structures and ward councillors should be spelled out clearly in a simplified language that can be easily understood and operationalised by people at grass roots level,” he said.

Chingaipe said although a constituency is used for purposes of allocating money, MPs should understand that the money is essentially a community fund and cannot and should not be expended at the discretion of the legislator.

“Increasing the allocation will be tantamount to giving an MP an instrument for his or her political patronage. Increased allocations without the necessary reforms will further fuel the conflict of roles between MPs and ward councillors,” he said.

On his part, Kalondondolo Project manager Jephter Mwanza said if it were up to him, he could not have recommended CDF’s increase.

He said MPs have abused CDF and deliberately overlooked the checks and balances for political reasons.

“We need to have more debate on this proposed increase because the studies that were carried in four districts clearly show that the quality of the projects that have been carried out is very low,” Mwanza said.

He said from the studies that Kalondondo carried out there were indications that although mismanagement is noted no single person is responsible for the actions.