Chimwendo Banda laments missing of Zomba District Council on GESP grants

Minister of Local Government, Unity and Culture, Richard Chimwendo Banda, has expressed disappointment over the missing of Zomba District Council on this year’s K800 million worth of Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) Project of K800 million.

Chimwendo Banda was reacting to a technical support statement, which indicates that Zomba is missing on the performance based grant.

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The minister said out of the 28 districts, only three, which are Machinga, Chiradzulu and Zomba, failed to meet the assessment thereby missing the opportunity to benefit from the grant.

“We don’t want this to happen again in the coming year. So, I came with technical team to go around and look at those issues as government. We want to see developments taking place across the country and this money should reach out to people. That is why we are moving around talking to the councils and reminding them on their responsibilities as councillors, members of parliament and management on how they can perform and improve where they didn’t do well this year,” said Chimwendo Banda.

The minister also advised the council not to fire officials suspected to have committed misdemeanors.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Zomba Changalume, Bizwik Million, said as a council, they will respect and stick to what the minister directed not to remove officials from their positions.

“I understood what the minister has said because it’s time to resolve the issues as He said removing them it’s like transferring the same problem so we want to give them a chance and room for improvement,” said Million.

The newly elected chairperson for Zomba District Council, Baxter Chirwa, who is also a councillor for Nswaswa Ward, expressed commitment to bring unity among stakeholders.