By Tilyenji Mwanza
Looking at the various comments especially the ones with satire on council mishandling CDF, I am alarmed by the levels of ignorance: People do not understand the difference between Constituency Development Fund, Local Government Equilisation Fund as well as Locally Generated Funds.
Then what is even more baffling or actually worrisome is that I do not think some of our leaders even understand the CDF guidelines ala mukakakwa 🤣.
A dire need exists to sensitise and educate the leaders and the public on the above especially that Zambia continues to adopt Decentralisation using devolution.
Also, I urge people to understand the various stages of decentralisation the country has gone through which included the establishment of the Local Government Service Commission before demeaning Council employees and calling them illiterate just because we faced some salary troubles. There is no controlling officer who would dare divert CDF funds to pay salaries even if his officers have not been paid.
What is probably needed at this stage is a promotion of transparency and more participants the world wide skew is e-Participation achieved from E-government but as we advance this we need to contextualise Zambia. Zambia has low literacy rate and even lower understanding of computer. The country is still in construction stages of communication infrastructure that can warrant successful E-Government implementation so we need to embrace both traditional and new innovative ways if we will guarantee participatory development.