In an effort to make sure that their issues are addressed, Members of Parliament (MPs) Thursday fought tooth and nail to ensure votes which directly affect their operations were increased.<\/p>\n
They did that without considering the allocations from which the funds were being deducted.<\/p>\n
With Minister of Finance, Goodall Gondwe announcing that an allocation to the National Assembly was increased from K9.4 billion to K10.4 billion, the vote did not meet resistance from the MPs.<\/p>\n
However, passing an allocation of K50.9 billion National Local Government Finance Committee, met resistance, even after Gondwe had announced that the vote had been increased by K600 million to accommodate an increment of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from K12 million to K15 million.<\/p>\n
The MPs argued that the increment was not enough, saying an increment to CDF in the range of K20 million to K30 million would make sense.<\/p>\n
Some MPs even suggested that an allocation to District Development Fund (DDF) under the same vote should be reduced so that the money should be used to increase CDF allocation.<\/p>\n
Nkhotakota South MP, Grezzelder Jeffrey said DDF is not properly used by the councils.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need is CDF. On DDF, council officials are just idle. CDF should at least be increased to K18 million,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Amid cheers from People\u2019s Party (PP) and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) benches, Blantyre Kabula MP Abdul Gaffar argued: \u201cCDF has been seen to work well. Let the DDF funds be transferred to CDF.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dowa East legislator, Richard Chimwendo Banda, argued that by taking money from the DDF the whole vote will not be affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are talking about the same allocation here. What we are saying is that money for CDF is not enough. Government should also consider stopping all the deductions made to CDF. Currently, about 22.5 percent is deducted from CDF in form of administration fees and Value added tax. Government should put a waiver,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n
But Gondwe argued that the other activities the MPs were saying money should be deducted from were equally important.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs lawmakers we have to go by the laws. Otherwise, we are rallying behind CDF because it\u2019s ours. We have to respect the laws we create,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But more MPs spoke in support of more funds to CDF. After close to one hour discussing the vote, Second Deputy Speaker, Clement Chiwaya, said the MPs were to vote over the issue.<\/p>\n
Gondwe was later heard: \u201cI respect both (DDF and CDF). District Councils have to work. If they are not working properly we have to find ways of improving their performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a voice vote, the MPs shot down the new allocation to the CDF, pushing for more. The matter was further decided by a roll call vote, in which 71 MPs voted against the K15 million allocation, while 49 supported the new amount. 70 MPs were absent.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Gaffar and Jeffrey who spoke in support of an increment to CDF voted against the increment during roll call.<\/p>\n
When discussing an allocation to Ministry of Lands, Gondwe said the vote had been trimmed to K17.6 billion, from the original K19.2 billion. He said K1 billion had gone to National Assembly while K600 million had gone to National Local Government Finance Committee. The amount was deducted from Malata Subsidy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an effort to make sure that their issues are addressed, Members of Parliament (MPs) Thursday fought tooth and nail to ensure votes which directly affect their operations were increased. They did that without considering the allocations from which the funds were being deducted. With Minister of Finance, Goodall Gondwe announcing that an allocation to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27255,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27251\/revisions\/27255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}