The 2023-24 financial year comes to a close tomorrow and the councils will have gone almost the entire year struggling to for funding from Treasury, Malawi News has established.
For 10 months now, the councils have witnessed persistent sporadic funding for Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT) and General Resource Fund (GRF).
These are two funding pockets that are critical in ensuring smooth operations and delivery of services in the local government system.
Following up on our earlier coverage of the funding woes in the councils, we spoke with 14 District Commissioners (DCs) on whether the situation has at all improved as the financial year closes.
All of them confirmed they are closing the year as bad as they started it and they have no hope that Treasury can fund them with arrears in the new financial year.
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“To be honest, work has not been easy. We have had to make do with our revenue collection and it has not been easy at all. There are so many operations that we have to undertake at the councils that require a lot of money and that ORT and GRF is used for things like those.
“I will give you an example of fuel for ambulances of district hospitals. That is the money we use. But now we have to move on,” said one DC.
Another DC said borrowing has become order of the day.
“You cannot tell service providers to go and get money from Capital Hill. We take the bullets because it is not their problem. The problem lies on our end so we make sure that we cover those gaps that exist due to the lack of funding through borrowing.
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“But there is only so much that we can do. We are supposed to receive funding from the government and when it does not fund us it is not something government ought to be reminded about because it is its mandate. But it seems government is not moved so there is nothing we can do. We are crippled,” he said.
The matter also came up during a council meeting in Nkhata Bay on Wednesday this week where DC Rodgers Newa admitted that the council is going through financial challenges.
According to a Zodiak Online report, Newa said lack of funding has negatively impacted on monitoring the progress of some projects being implemented in the district.
Executive Director for Malawi Local Government Association (Malga) Hadrod Mkandawire said his organisation wrote the Treasury seeking an audience on the matter but they never got any response.
Mkandawire said keeping in mind the persistent funding problems, the 2024-25 national budget intentions may not be attainable because the citizenry is denied good services.
“The 2024-25 national budget is premised on economic recovery and resilience but this cannot be achieved because people will not be active at the local level where a huge part of the population accesses services.
“We cannot have economic recovery when majority of people who access local services cannot access them due to lack of funding,” he said.
Minister of Local Government Richard Chimwendo Banda did not pick up our calls on several attempts.
However, Secretary to Treasury Betchani Tchereni said government has been facing some liquidity challenges but within its means, it has been funding the councils.
“We have tried our best to fund a lot of the councils. I am not saying they are lying; I am saying within the ambit of our resources, we have done our best to fund activities of MDAs including councils.
“That we have tried to do. Some may have received very late; others a little. There could be others who may have not received and there would be some reasons. Probably they were running projects and that could have caused us to rethink. That is what I can say for now,” he said.
