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CDF needs to be unlocked and not increased – Imboela

By GIDEON NYENDWA

THE Constituency Development Funds (CDF) should have been to be unlocked for easy access for Zambians before deciding to increase the fund, National Democratic Congress (NDC) president Saboi Imboela has said.

Ms. Imboela said the government should have maintained K25.7 million and concentrate on unlocking it so that the people in the constituencies could access the money so that it could be maximized to the fullest.

She said while it was good to hear that government was not going to recall the unutilised funds, increasing the threshold of the CDF should have waited because the Constituencies had failed to exhaust the first K25.7 million.

Government increased the CDF from K25.7 million to K28.3 million for the year 2023.

Ms. Imboela said decentralisation was not only taking money to the people but also making constituencies to start making their own decisions.

“Taking money to the people and having them queue for approval is not decentralisation at all,” she said.

She said government needed to work around making CDF easily accessible by the people before they could think of increasing the fund.

Ms. Imboela said having too much money sitting idle was a breeding ground for corruption and the earlier the problem was addressed the better.

Meanwhile, Ms. Imboela said the ruling party should stop politicising the CDF because the fund was not for the UPND but for all Zambians.

She said there had been protests by UPND members from different parts of the country displaying their displeasure if they suspect that PF members were benefitting which was not supposed to be as the fund was for all Zambians.

Ms. Imboela said there was a need to restructure CDF and detach politics in the allocations of the funds.

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