By NATION REPORTER
THE Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) has proposed the relocation of the management of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises Development for enhanced management, implementation and empowerment of loans and grants to the general citizenry.
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JCTR says in its current form, the CDF has weak structures that hinders the funds from reaching the intended beneficiaries.
JCTR Programme Manager – Faith and Justice Fr. Grant Tungay says the shift is proposed because the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises Development has more capacity to manage loans and grants as witnessed with other initiatives like the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) loans, compared to the Ministry of Local government.
He notes lack of transparency in the implementation of the CDF, where community participation in public bid opening for contractors has been extremely low, resulting into poor community participation in accessing the fund, and low participation in the selection of community projects.
“There is also low accountability in the implementation of the CDF as there has been low information sharing, especially monitoring reports,” Fr. Tungay says.
He notes that there’s corruption in the way the CDF has been administered with politicians influencing he processes.
“The JCTR has also noted weak monitoring mechanisms of the beneficiary database. In the cases, there has been the issue of double dipping, with some beneficiaries belonging to multiple cooperatives and applying to numerous constituencies,” Fr. Tungay says.
He said while the idea of allocating resources to the communities through the CDF is beyond reproach, with the enhanced CDF (in both amounts and scope from K28.7 million to K30.6 million) having potential of bringing about a huge economic transformation at the community level, the challenges in its implementation system need to be changed.
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