Local Government and Rural Development Minister Garry Nkombo has said his Ministry will need to use other innovations to finance infrastructure development in newly created districts.
The Minister says he sympathizes with the situation whereby officers have to commute over between 100 to 180 kilometres to go for work in new districts like Vubwi and Chasefu because of lack of decent housing, while the road infrastructure is poor.
ZANIS reports that Mr Nkombo was speaking yesterday when he conferred with his Eastern Province Minister Peter Phiri over the challenges that newly created districts are facing in the province.
Raising the challenges, Mr Phiri told the Local Government Minister that government workers in Vubwi, Chasefu and Lusangazi districts have no accommodation for housing and offices.
He said productivity is low among workers commuting over distances of 150 kilometres in case of Vubwi and 180 kilometres in Chasefu to report for work, and that the road infrastructure is also poor.
“In Vubwi, they live in Chipata and they have to cover a distance of about 150 kilometres every day to go to work. And this is actually affecting their performance in a way that they would arrive late for work and they will try by all means to knock off early so that they find time to reach their places,” Mr Phiri said.
In response, Mr Nkombo said the Ministry is currently constrained financially.
He explained that against that K300 million in this year’s budget, government has under Local Government Ministry a pending claim of K4.1 billion for outstanding contracts procured during the last administration.
He said other than the K4.1 billion, the Ministry also over procured feeder roads up to the tune of K13 billion, of which 60 to 70 per cent of the contracts were given to party cadres.
“You can imagine that in the last four years there has been an allocation for feeder roads of average of K300 million per annum and the total number of contracts that were procured amounts to K13 billion, and that difference is just too ghastly in my view to contemplate,” Mr Nkombo said.
He agreed with his Eastern Province counterpart that it was true that the back-and-forth movement of workers who commute affects their productivity.
However, Mr Nkombo explained that since UPND took over government about six months ago, it has had a lot of cleaning up to do in terms of changing things from what is more sustainable.
Mr Nkombo hoped that for the ministry to undertake infrastructure development in new districts, relief from institutions such as the World Bank financial relief or finding other financing innovations would help.
“And so that is part of the headache that the ministry is facing. And we are just hopeful that our IMF programme may at one point unlock certain doors in order for us to be able, either through supplementary budget or other innovations, to start paying the contractors,” he said.
He said the declaration of Chasefu and Lusangazi as districts was prematurely done.
“Again this is the pure typical case of acting before the application of the mind, because it is simply unthinkable that you can create and then let people start operating under a tree. I think these are ills that we are committed to resolve and see to it that our people slide back to some levels of comfort, at least within this term running into 2026,” he said.
Other means? We all know that is the birth of corruption. Just stick to the budget and stop creating districts that you cant maintain.
I’ve never heard a cabinet minister relying on IMF for his projects. Planning to Make a house on Kaloba sure?
To save money, fire all district commissioners in so-called newly-created districts and only hv district projects under a professional project manager to supervise infrastructure development. Once basic infrastructure is in place, u can then hv people appointed and recruited because they will hv a permanent office from where they be able to dispense public services. Too many people underrate the effect of government borrowing on the cost of living via high interest rates. Sata messed up too many things by not distinguishing btwn a district project and a fully-fledged district. It seems even the New Dawn government doesn’t know the difference either.