By Joel Chirwa
Mzuzu, Mana: Senior Traditional Authority Mtwalo of Mzimba has appealed to National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) Trust to intensity public awareness on Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to protect it from being politicised.
Mtwalo made the appeal during a stakeholders meeting which was organized by NICE Trust to update the stakeholders on the organisation’s ongoing activities, challenges and successes.
He said the organisation needs to intensify civic education on CDF and other development windows at local levels to promote transparency and accountability in public resources management.
“Some politicians take advantage of their communities’ lack of knowledge by claiming that the resources have come from their personal pockets.
Some have even taken an extra step by allocating the resources in favour of areas where they got more votes forgetting that CDF is generated from taxes and these are public funds,” said Mtwalo.
Nice Trust Civil Education Officer responsible for Mzimba North, Nkhatabay and Likoma, Lucy Kalua pledged that her organisation will continue engaging the citizenry on CDF allocations.
She said though some communities lack knowledge on CDF, some communities in some quarters have demonstrated keen interest in public expenditure tracking of different development windows such as CDF and District Development Fund.
“There is growing awareness and interest among the general public in following up implementation of projects which are supported by public resources,” said Kalua.
