THE NATIONAL BUDGET AND NOT CDF, SHOULD BE THE DRIVER OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA.
By former deputy Finance Minister Hon Jonas Shakafuswa
Zambia needs to wake up to its utilisation of its full resources potential to develop itself. You can not only rely on CDF, a component of the budget of Ministry of Local Government to be a driver of national development. The Government should identify and fund line ministries as drivers of national development to bring about the much needed national development.
We can then allow Ministries to devolve to replicate themselves at Constituency level to give meaningful leadership and expertise to CDF.
We pioneered CDF as a way of taking decisions making on development to the people. Countries which copied from us have gone further devolving the functions of Ministries to operate at Constituency level.
This has seen the immediate uplifting of people’s lives, as communities take charge of their welfare priorities.But today, some components of what CDF is applied on is dictated from outside the Constituency ward development committees, who should be the drivers.
This is against the spirit with which CDF was created. Let us talk of K10 billion in the hands of each Constituency than a meager much publitised K40 million. We can improve and do better as a nation.