09 Mar 2014

Member of Parliament for South East South, Mr Odirile Motlhale put before Parliament a motion that requests government to consider establishing a constituency development fund.

Presenting the motion on March 7, Mr Motlhale said the motion was once brought before Parliament but was deferred for further consultation, adding that consultations on the motion had been made.

Mr Motlhale said MPs were elected with the expectation to bring developments to their constituencies but this posed a challenge because projects were undertaken at government level.

He said therefore there was need for the government to establish a constituency development fund following the centralisation development fund model (CDF) to enable MPs to undertake community development projects within their constituencies. Mr Motlhale said the model was first adopted in India and had proved to have worked for other countries as well.

He said allocated funds under CDF were intended for development of constituencies based on their respective needs, adding the funds could be used to undertake minor community projects such as maintenance of fences, access roads and drilling of community boreholes

Mr Motlhale said the motion was not asking to move away from using the National Development Plan but asked for minor projects to be implemented at constituency level. He proposed for the allocation of five per cent of the total development budget into this fund and divide it equally amongst the 57 constituencies.

In addition, he said different stakeholders would be welcome to make some donations to the fund.Furthermore he said there should be a constituency development fund committee constituting people from various sectors within the community to run this fund.

The committee which will be chaired by MPs, he said will be elected democratically by the community to guard against MPs personal interests.The committee, he said should report to their respective communities and account for the money and progress of the projects.

In addition he said the fund would be subject to scrutiny by a parliament committee. Responding to Mr Motlhale’s motion, Minister of Finance and Development Planning Mr Kenneth Matambo said before MPs could debate on the motion they should bear in mind that the government had systems in place to undertake projects citing National Development Plan and District Development Plan.

He said the system went back to villages where there were village development committees to undertake minor community development projects. He said they should ask themselves the gap that the fund would be filling which was unable to be filled by the existing system.

Regarding the capitalisation of the fund, Mr Matambo said it was a question of whether MPs were prepared to reduce the development budget by 5 per cent and channel it into the fund. He said he was uncertain whether the proposed fund would address issues raised by MPs that some constituencies were more developed than others.

In addition he rhetorically asked how these projects were going to be identified and who was going to approve them.He said he was foreseeing a situation where the government was going to need staff to administer this fund. Ends