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Luwingu District Commissioner, Mambwe Katontoka, has praised government through the Ministry of Local Government and Housing for putting in place measures to safeguard Constituency Development Funds (CDF) countrywide.
Mrs Katontoka observed that public funds have been misused in the past resulting in retarding developmental projects in sectors of education, health, agriculture and road rehabilitation and construction.
She was speaking today in a speech read on her behalf by the District Education Standards Officer (DESO), Teddy Musonda, at a forum on corruption prevention and enhancing transparency and accountability in the utilization and management of CDF.
The meeting, which was organized by the Anti-Voter Apathy Project (AVAP) at youth skills training centre, attracted youths, civil servants Churches and civil society organizations.
As a way of strengthening the involvement of civil society in the fight against corruption, Mrs Katontoka said government, through the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) with the support from the Department for International Development, has conducted countrywide capacity building trainings and urged all the citizenry to come on board and fight the scourge.
Mrs Katontoka said it is through such meetings that corruption can be eradicated because the community will be well informed on the utilization of constituency development funds.
And speaking earlier, Northern Province AVAP Regional Co-ordinator, Kelly Kashiwa , implored people to run away from the notion and tendency that CDF is money for parliamentarians or councillors.
Mr Kashiwa said CDF is public funds generated from taxation appropriated from the national treasury.
He added that if funds are misapplied through corruption the growth of democracy and the rule of law gets impeded.
Mr Kashiwa also cited unnecessary delays in making payments to complete projects, lack of awareness on the guidelines and lack of information and adverts over the availability of CDF by the council as some of the contributing factors to corruption which need to be worked on by the government.
