When member of Parliament for Machinga South East Constituency, Reverend Wilson Ndomondo, unilaterally suspended Public Works Programme (PWP) in Ngokwe Ward in Machinga, the people saw red.<\/p>\n
The suspension meant that some people of the ward, which was hard hit by hunger just like many parts of Malawi, had been denied a means of earning some money to buy maize.<\/p>\n
According to Group Village Headman Maniya, he was briefed about the halting of PWP activities in his area by members of the NGO-Gender Coordination Network (NGO-GCN) committee after they approached him on the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs someone who has benefited from NGO-GCN activities, I realised that what the MP did was not the proper way development should be implemented as he had practically usurped powers of development committees such as village development committee, area development committee and even full council,\u201d Maniya said.<\/p>\n
He said the MP\u2019s action put the lives of women and children at a greater risk of hunger since men in the area spend most of their time fishing on Lake Chilwa leaving their families without any food.<\/p>\n
Maniya said the feud between the MP and ward councillors of the area due to differences in party affiliation was costing people of Machinga South East development and the opportunity to avert hunger through participation in PWP activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy area has been hard hit by hunger as a combination of flooding of Lake Chilwa and erratic rains wiped out crops so much so that a kilogramme of maize was at K300. What the MP did was like allowing over 300 households perish from hunger as they had been denied a means to earn money to buy maize,\u201d said the said.<\/p>\n
He said Ndomondo thought people in the area were unaware of how democracy, good governance and development work and wanted to take advantage of that perceived ignorance to impose his political beliefs on them.<\/p>\n
If truth be told, the MP wanted people who helped him win elections to benefit from development in form of political appeasement which is against the inherent nature of decentralisation, added the chief.<\/p>\n
Edson Juma, Ngokwe ADC chair, said the main problem threatening governance in his area has been the inability by MPs to accept the separation of powers between members of Parliament and councillors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe MP still believes he is the champion of development in the area and is not happy that with decentralisation, they are structures that initiate development projects,\u201d Juma said.<\/p>\n
He said together with chiefs, members of NGO-GCN with skills and knowledge acquired in the third phase of the \u2018Promotion of accountability between duty bearers and stakeholders: A key to social economic development for women and girls project,\u2019 they went to the Machinga District Commissioner\u2019s office to quash the suspension.<\/p>\n
However, in a telephone interview, Ndomondo maintained the process was flawed and as MP for the area, he could not bury his head in the sand while things were going astray.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not allow a few people to benefit from the exercise while deserving beneficiaries were left out in the cold by those responsible for identifying beneficiaries and that is why I stopped the entire process,\u201d Ndomondo said.<\/p>\n
In Chikweo Ward in the same constituency, Makwela Primary School now has two extra school blocks with funding from Local Development Fund (LDF). Behind this good news, however, lies a mess.<\/p>\n
The committee responsible for looking after the project roofed the blocks with 32-gauge iron sheets instead of 28-gauge iron sheets that were quoted in the bill of quantity. The 32-gauge iron sheets are cheaper and the community suspected that the committee intended to pocket the difference.<\/p>\n
Rose Hora, 40, from Saiti Village in the area of Traditional Authority Chikweo, Machinga, is one of the women who has benefited immensely from the NGO-GCN Malawi Electoral and Decentralisation Activity (NGO-GCN Meda) Project.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter we got wind of the alleged fraud happening at Makwela School, we mobilised ourselves and approached the committee implementing the school blocks project to monitor and also seek explanation on why they had roofed the school blocks with 32 gauge instead of 28 gauge iron sheets,\u201d Hora said.<\/p>\n
She said the committee admitted to the fraud and promised to replace the 32 gauge iron sheet with 28 gauge using their own resources.<\/p>\n
Melvin Mtimaukanena, Chikweo NGO-GCN committee chair, said there are a number of success stories in his area concerning holding duty-bearers to account as a result of the Meda project.<\/p>\n
\u201cCitizens are now dedicated and diligent in following up on public funds expenditure to meet intended development project and speak out loud whenever there is an anomaly in development implementation and in that way democracy is thriving,\u201d Mtimaukanena said.<\/p>\n
He gave an example of World Food Programme relief food distribution implemented by Emmanuel International where beneficiaries were being given supplies that were underweight but after NGO-GCN intervened the matter was amicably resolved.<\/p>\n
Aubrey Chaguzika, monitoring and evaluation officer for NGO GCN, said his organisation has been implementing an Issue-Based Voter Education Campaign project and follow up phases in Machinga South East Constituency targeting Chikweo and Ngokwe wards since 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been promoting transparency and accountability among duty-bearers on public funded projects and also empowering citizens to hold their leaders accountable and what people in Ngokwe and Chikweo wards did was just that,\u201d Chaguzika said.<\/p>\n
He said after gaining knowledge on governance the people demanded sustainable and enhanced accountability from their elected leaders, hence they disagreed with what their MP did to unilaterally suspend development project in the area by engaging the district commissioner\u2019s office and other stakeholders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When member of Parliament for Machinga South East Constituency, Reverend Wilson Ndomondo, unilaterally suspended Public Works Programme (PWP) in Ngokwe Ward in Machinga, the people saw red. The suspension meant that some people of the ward, which was hard hit by hunger just like many parts of Malawi, had been denied a means of earning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28640","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\/28640","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=28640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28645,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28640\/revisions\/28645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}