Mzuzu City Council queried over K91 million

Tom Sangala February 3, 2020

804 1 minute read

By Bethsaida Msukwa:

Mzuzu City Council (MCC) has been asked to explain how K91 million from Infrastructure Development Fund (IDF) has been used, as ward councillors fear it has been misappropriated.

This came to light on Friday when Women’s Legal Resource Centre (Wolrec) organised a meeting to enable the councillors discuss some of the developmental issues together with the residents in the city to ensure transparency and accountability.

The 15 councillors of the city have alleged that the council secretariat received the money on December 31 last year but the councillors were not notified for approval.

The councillors, however, said upon realising that the council had received the money, they confronted the secretariat which in turn, said the cash was used to re-pay some of the loans that the council had.

Peterkings Mbale, a councillor for Zolozolo West Ward, said the council has not considered the welfare of people as the money was meant for development projects.

“We were told that the money has been used to pay back loans that the city had. They said some of it went into motorcycle repayments, salaries and the like but we are not convinced on how the money was used considering that it is meant for development in the city and not to solve the council’s problems,” Mbale said.

One of the participants during the meeting, Janet Macheka, from Zolozolo East ward expressed concern over the matter saying, diversion of the money by the council has put the people’s lives at risk as most of the city’s roads and bridges are in bad shape.

MCC Chief Executive Officer, MacLoud Kadam’manja, said the city’s Mayor, Kondwani Nyasulu, was better placed to explain the issue.

Nyasulu referred the matter to the city’s spokesperson, McDonald Gondwe, who asked for more time before commenting on the matter.

In her remarks, Wolrec Mzuzu Project Officer, Prisca Nyasulu, said her organisation held the meeting to ensure accountability and transparency between the councillors and their people.

“We are trying to incapacitate the capacities of the local councillors so that they hold their duty bearers, the secretariat accountable. We are also capacitating the capacities of the people that they work with in their respective wards. In this case, we are taking about the councillors,” Nyasulu said.