Nankhumwa admits plunder in councils
Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Kondwani Nankhumwa has admitted high levels of corruption and abuse of funds in local councils, attributing the challenge to lack of capacity.
The minister’s remarks come a week after government started disbursing the controversial K4 billion community development allocation to all 35 councils in the country.
Speaking in an interview in Blantyre on Wednesday when he opened a three-day technical meeting for district commissioners (DC) and chief executive officers from the country’s councils, Nankhumwa said the funds will be administered by area development committees who have been given guidelines on how to utilise the funds.
He said: “When area development committees are collecting the cheques, they are also provided with a booklet of guidelines. They are required to open accounts and the role of the DCs, CEOs and the central government is to monitor and evaluate the operationalisation of the whole system.”
Nankhumwa lamented abuse of funds in councils, particularly in areas such as sectoral funds, trustee accounts and chiefs honoraria; as well as abuse of public resources by some officers.
Observing that the mismanagement and abuse of resources in councils threatens the decentralisation process, the minister said the guidelines drawn by his ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development will help addressing the challenges.
“For deceased estates and chiefs honoraria, this meeting should come up with tangible actions for controlling officers to stop rampant abuse of these funds. How can one be so unethical to abuse even deceased estates money?” he asked.
To address the challenges, Nankhumwa said the Finance Ministry is deploying 10 internal auditors to the Local Government Ministry to enhance public finance management in councils.
He also said the ministry plans to fill all critical vacancies in councils, including those of directors, procurement officers, internal auditors and finance officers in the 2018/2019 financial year.
“Government has already provided K1 billion in the proposed national nudget towards this exercise. This will go a long way in improving the capacity situation in councils,” said Nankhumwa.
In an interview on the sidelines of the meeting, Karonga DC Richard Hara acknowledged receiving his council’s allocation of the K4 billion funds.
“We received about K102 million to be shared in the district’s five constituencies. Each of the constituencies will get at least K19 million. However, K3 million is for administration purposes,” he explained.
