Parliament adopts Constituency Development Fund, Auditor General reports
Parliament has adopted two reports on the misuse of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allocations as well as reports of the Auditor General (AG) on accounts of the local councils for the years of 2015 and 2016 as well as 2017 and 2018.
The Public Accounts Committee (Pac) presented the reports recently and its chairperson Shadreck Namalomba said it was the wish of the committee to see to it that the Executive acted on the recommendations.
“In the report, we recommended that the government, through the Office of the President and Cabinet, should discipline officers that showed total disregard for financial management guidelines. What we want to see is that office moving forward with this process,” he said
Namalonda also said members of Parliament (MPs) should take an initiative to oversee funds’ use.
On the CDF, the committee agreed that MPs should avoid cutting corners in the management of the funds, stressing that, going forward, Parliament would begin naming and shaming such lawmakers.
The committee reported that billions of Kwacha were misappropriated by the local councils, a development that raises questions about the competence of controlling officers in Local Government institutions.
The audit reports indicated that revenue totalling K331,094,918.82 was abused in 2016, and the figure increased to K508,213,323.44 in 2017. In 2018, revenue totalling K4,504,241,200.69 was abused in councils.
