SIKONGO COUNCIL AWARDS CDF BURSARIES TO CIVIL SERVANTS CHILDREN

MR JULIUS Katuka, the SIKONGO Town Council Secretary yesterday waffled and struggled to explain to the Local Government Accounts Committee why the local authority had sponsored 19 pupils from other constituencies and children of civil servants for bursaries against Constituency Development Fund (CDF) regulations.

The bursary sponsorship is for vulnerable children.

Mr Katuka said after realizing that the local authority had sponsored pupils who were not qualified, they stopped the funding albeit monies had already been paid to the schools in advance.

Mr Katuta profusely apologised to the committee for abrogating the CDF regulations and promised never to break the regulations.

“We paid the monies for all the pupils who had applied. But when the Auditor General came, it was discovered that some pupils were children of civil servants. So we stopped the sponsorship though we had already paid the monies in advance,” he explained.

Mr Katuta said the council paid the monies even before the schools opened because some pupils in boarding schools who have been awarded scholarships did not have food or mattresses.

But committee chairperson Darius Mulunda, the UPND Siavonga chipped in and said lack of food for pupils was not the local authority’s problem but accountability.

“You wanted to solve someone’s problem but you ended up creating a problem for yourself. You abused public funds,” Mr Mulunda said.

He said it was the duty of the council to ensure that pupils selected for bursaries were duly qualified.

Mr Mulunda said even if there was an outcry from the community, the law and regulations still needed to be followed.

Chasefu Independent MP Misheck Nyambose wondered why Sikongo Town Council had been so generous with public funds to the point of paying defunct colleges to train beneficiaries of CDF bursaries.

Mr Nyambose asked why the council failed to verify the status of the beneficiaries.