Heavy red tape in CDF
THE two highest offices in our land are fully informed and recognise that 2022 CDF is at risk of overrunning the annual timeframe. 2022 CDF is suffering from rampant inefficient disbursement because of the heavy red tape in the application procedures.
The Vice President, Ms Mutale Nalumango while on the Copperbelt for the labour celebrations on May 2 was informed by Copperbelt Minister, Elisha Matambo on big money stuck with local authorities because community projects across the 22 constituencies have not been approved (Daily Nation, April 28, 2022).
On May 14, President Hakainde Hichilema was on a one-day working tour on the Copperbelt and addressed the issue of CDF and promised to review the bottlenecks affecting its disbursement.
Many people had expressed fears of the capacity of local authorities to manage the workload under the increased budget from K1.6 to K25.7 million.
The current guidelines can easily be amended because they do have the legislative authority like an Act of Parliament. This is simply a policy framework to guide the executive and stakeholder on constituency development projects or initiatives.
What are the problems that President HH and his Vice should address? There are many, though the main ones include the lack of adequate capacity for effective delivery of projects within the local authorities as implementing agencies.
The other one is the lack of stakeholder approach so that there is cross-pollination of competencies and experiences between the local authorities and civil society organisations.
Most of the local authorities are treating the CDF like a feeding tray for themselves and yet they do not have the capacity of providing guidance to applicants on how to formulate high quality project proposals.
They are putting too much burden on community cooperatives with no skills in proposal writing or financial resources to hire consultants from the private sector or indeed nonstate actors.
The new CDF regime has increased the administrative budget lines. These monies can and should be used for capacity building in proposal writing or formulation of business plans by the civil society organisation or private sector consultants.
Once this is done, the local authorities will also help de-congest the NGOs crowded within the governance thematic area to community service delivery.
Most of the NGOs are anchored within the governance area because of available donor support.
We are almost in the mid of year and still battling with application procedures instead of the grassroots implementation phase. The country cannot afford to waste resources in the midst increased poverty levels. The local government must stop the blame game and get down.