Civil society backs Govt on removal of politicians from CDF committees
THE Civil Society Organizations Decentralization Alliance Network-CSO-DANhas backed government’s directive to remove all political party officials from Constituency Development Fund – CDF Committees.
Local Government Minister Garry Nkombo recently gave a directive that anybody holding a party position should vacate CDF committees because they do not qualify to sit on the Committees.
But CSO DAN National Coordinator Ernest Mwenya said the removal of the political officials from the CDF committees is good move because allowing them would defeat the purpose of having such Committees.
Mr Mwenya said allowing political party officials would politicize the management of the CDF which was supposed to be manned by neutral community members.
Meanwhile The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has attributed the failure by youth and women led cooperatives to have access to empowerment funds under CDF to registration issues at the registrar of cooperatives.
Ministry of Local Government and Rural Permanent secretary Mambo Hamaundu said the guidelines to access the CDF funds are clear and simple has provided by the ministry.
Mr Hamaundu said it for this reason that the registrar of the cooperatives has been given an ultimatum to ensure that they ease the process of registration so that people are able to have access to the funds quickly.
He said that in the meantime the ministry has since given a guidance to the many cooperatives that have not received there certificates to use their payment documents as evidence that their process is being processed while they make applications to access the funds.