The Local Government Association of Zambia is concerned at delays to implement the Decentralization Policy, adopted four years ago.
The association has called on the central government to speed up the implementation of the decentralization process, to strengthen councils.
In resolutions read by Mpongwe District Council Secretary Moses Kamocha at the 51st LGAZ Annual Conference in Livingstone, the association also called on the Ministry of Local Government to mount sensitization programmes.
And the delegates resolved that the National Housing Bonds Trust model of financing should be accepted in principle as long as local authorities access the profits of the programme and own the houses to be constructed.
SAGE, Your long awaited prayer still on the table, it has been pending for 4 years.
Now you know why Decentralisation will never take place.
And how will the councils be strengthened when they have no new ideas and implementers, and the economy is weak.
I guess the country will remain like Botswana, only 4 town are worth talking off.
We need to understand that there are power bases in this process who are pulling in opposite directions. And the councils themselves are too poor to wrestle with the urban political elites who have everything to lose if this historically-entrenched inequitable distribution of power and resources is redressed. I wish the energy, at least some of it, directed at the constitution could go to lobby for this policy. Unless some donors fund this, GRZ wont do it.
#2 This is retrogressive, dont always look for donors to help.Zambia has alot of resources which end up in wrong hands.A due diligence study is vital before anything,there is need to identify the core developmental issues in each and every area,how they can be financed and then work towards making a considerable participatory budget,after consolidating these figures the treasury now must start looking at ways and means of meeting those requisties, otherwise we must start from somewhere,our collegues abroad have council taxes to support their developemnets, they use the state lottery fund to supplement treasury, so many other things can be looked at instead of restricting yourselves to thinking that only donors will salvaged you from the titanic.