The newly-launched second phase of the Decentralisation Policy has come with a huge challenge for council leaders to prove their worth to occupy their respective offices.
Minister of Local Government, Unity and Culture Richard Chimwendo Banda said this follows the new policy’s guidelines to fully devolve central powers to the councils.
Addressing council leaders from all 28 districts, city and municipalities in Salima on Friday, he said the central government will only play an oversight role on decisions taken at council level.
“From now on, the central system will only play supervisory and technical support roles, while you make all decisions and plans for your respective councils so that you have no lame excuses for failure,” said the minister.
Previously, councils have been blamed for various degrees of failure evidenced in annual council audits, but their excuses have been that projects and programmes were initiated by the central government without their full involvement.
In some cases, councils claimed that some poor decisions like in the awarding of contracts and filling of vacant positions were influenced by the central office and political interference.
But the Chimwendo Banda assured them that government will ensure that all these bottlenecks no longer exist.
The minister, together with the Malawi Local Government Association (Malga), were awarding best performing councils and individuals during the third annual awards gala dinner in Salima.
Malga executive director Hadrod Mkandawire said the government’s new approach on the implementation of the decentralisation policy will transform the councils’ approach on the general council administration.
He said: “The approach is the right move because for instance, the central government would initiate projects which the councils had no knowledge about so how would you expect them to implement such projects?
“Similarly, some party zealots, especially those in government, would dictate who gets the contract even though they don’t qualify. These are some of the common challenges that the Minister has promised to eliminate.”
Devolving central powers to councils will mean that councils will have full control of all council operations, including finances, recruitments, planning, execution, awarding of contracts and procurement of resources.
In an interview after the launch of the second phase of the Decentralisation Policy, World Bank senior public specialist Michael Roscott said government needs to seriously look into the issue of funding towards councils.
“It doesn’t make sense to devolve powers to councils which have no funding, the government of Malawi needs to ensure that councils are well funded,” he said.
On his part, United Nations Children’s Fund country representative Shadrack Omol said if well implemented, the policy has many benefits especially on the lives of children and women.
Malawi first launched a Decentralisation Policy in 1998, emphasizing on political and administrative decentralisation under the banner ‘Power to the People’ and through it, the government put in place a system of local representative democracy and devolved district administration.
