By ANDREW MUKOMA
TOURISM Minister and also Livingstone Member of Parliament, Rodney Sikumba has called for collective responsibility amongst councilors and the management at the local authority in order to deliver development now that the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) has been increased to more than K 25 million by the New Dawn government.
Mr Sikumba said yesterday that the councilors and the local authority have the responsibility of delivering development in all the 20 wards as guided by President Hakainde Hichilema through Finance Minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane during the budget presentation last week, Friday.
Addressing councilors over the weekend in Livingstone, Mr Sikumba said that CDF is meant to ignite development both in the tourism sector and improve the well-being of the people of Livingstone.
“The target that we have colleagues is that we need to come up with a business plan , with a development plan for Livingstone for the year 2022 before the end of this year. So, we have a lot of work to do and we need to work hand with the CDF committee that I am going to announce in the next one week,” he said.
“You may have heard his Excellency talking about; each constituency to come up with their own budget and this is a team that will come up with the budget for Livingstone,” Mr Sikumba said.
“I have said it before, the K 25 million we are talking about, we are not going to share it equally….no. You will have to agree and prioritize projects. We don’t want to have piecemeal projects where you start it and you can’t complete it and then you start a new one..no,” he said.
The Minister observed the need for consensus between the civic leaders and council management in coming up with tangible projects that will benefit the people of Livingstone and the tourism sector.
“You need consensus and you have to have collective responsibility for us to be seen that we are growing the tourism sector. In the absence of collective responsibility, we are going to have ourselves to blame, let’s not be greedy, get excited but we need to take development to the wards,” Mr Sikumba implored the civic leaders.
He said that the focus of the UPND government was to take development to the community.
“Believe me when the time comes for us to be subjected to another election, I will line all of you (councilors) and tell people that this person did not bring development to you and don’t blame the MP,” he said.
“Livingstone is not just my constituency but it is also the tourist capital of Zambia and as such it will be very good to treat it like that and create sinages and how best we can work around that,” he added.
