CHOMA Municipal Council engineers have been taken to task for
allegedly certifying completion of unfinished projects under the
Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
UPND Mbabala Constituency Member of Parliament Ephraim Bbelemu, on
Monday at a council meeting, castigated the engineers for certifying
that construction of Namuhila dam in Mbabala ward, at a cost of
K70,000 was completed, when in fact not.
The visibly angered MP claimed that certification of incomplete
projects citing the Namuhila dam funded under CDF, was tantamount to
fraud.
“Don’t run a council on a desk and indicate that projects are being
completed, you must visit these projects and get first-hand
information, “he said.
Mbabala and Choma Constituencies, receive K1.4 million each from
Government’s disbursement of CDF annually.
Mr Bbelemu admonished the engineers for allegedly making no attempts
to inspect CDF projects in areas of implementation.
“Anybody who wants to abuse CDF, we shall sort each other and I want
measures to be taken on these officers who are certifying incomplete
projects without seeing them, “he said.
He also castigated the council management for allegedly not monitoring
CDF projects and wondered how it could work if given a K10 billion
project.
He said the law enforcement agencies should take interest in the
manner CDF projects were being implemented.
His Choma Central counterpart, Cornelius Mweetwa described this year’s
use of CDF on community projects in his area as being disastrous.
He was not happy that some projects in the constituency, had delayed
to complete due to wrong building materials procured citing door
flames bought to upgrade Mbole health centre.
He said, Government should not always be blamed on completion of
projects when, in most instances, such delayments were caused by
officers procuring wrong materials.
Town Clerk Timothy Mambalakata said the local authority was doing its
best to ensure CDF projects in various communities were completed in
line with people’s expectations.
Am not a upnd fan,but this is the kind of mps we need.
certifying unfinished project typical zambian engineers,by the time project is handed over to government cracks could be following.
Its good that the MP acknowledged that its not always the Government to be blamed in lack of development in Southern Province
…wait a minute….I think the MP was just emotionally quick to castigate the engineers…he may not even have read the scope of work the contractor was asked to do…I can tell that from the figure involved…where on earth can a construction of anything worth to be called a DAM cost K70 000(about $7000)…??…these are projects which are done in phases….because of inadequate annual budget allocation….so bloggers please don’t get excited…the MP is just playing to the gallery….
that is what is needed…a wake up call now and again to make sure councils are working and let them know they are being watched. The councils are only interested in sharing plots and need a stricked regime to make sure they are doing the work they are supposed to do. even apply these wake up call to GRZ departments…