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::	The Poorest Council in the Richest District
	Mambwe District Council is in a financial crisis. A paradox to the fact that Mambwe district is considered the richest district in Eastern Province in terms of revenue from tourism and game hunting.

::	No Salary for 17 Months
	Mambwe District Council staff has not been paid for 17 months. “Every day is a struggle” says council employee “but hope is still there of getting paid one day”. The Council has 38 employees and an amount of ZMK150,000,000 is required to pay the staff their due wages for the past months.

::	Democracy on Standby
	Government is under pressure to act on the decentralisation process and provide the much needed resources to make the local councils perform. Meanwhile democracy is suffering

::	The National Decentralisation Policy

::	Change of Support
	MS-Zambia will no longer limit its support to council management levels alone, but also support the councillors who are the elected representatives of people in these districts.

::	More Seats for Women!
	Out of 1300 councillors only 95 are women. That is too few, according to some of the few female councillors in Zambia. They have developed a policy to increase the number of female councillors and suggest that 10 percent of all seats in local councils should be reserved for women.

::	SADC Declaration on Gender

::	ADC Formation in Mambwe Takes More than Five Years
	Long before the programme of ADC formation was initiated in1999, Mambwe thought the programme of Area Development Committees (ADC) would be easy since there were already similar structures at Chiefdom level and also Village Action Groups (VAG) in wards which would have acted as Zones. But five years have elapsed without completing the task.

::	The same Old Story...
	“ . . . when I was submitting to the CRC my mind kept wondering how possible that our local government system has been left unchecked in terms of Review even in the wake of serious steps towards decentralisation . . “

::	Monitoring Team Suspended
	Government has suspended the independent monitoring of the HIPC funds. Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) and the other members of the monitoring team are disappointed and fear that the suspension will lead to more misuse of the HIPC funds, which are reserved for poverty reduction.

::	News From PAB
	New PAB Chairperson

::	More Bite to MS in the South
	MS should include Development Workers from the South, as the evaluation recommends, says the PAB chairpersons, who attended the Annual Policy Meeting in Denmark. Further the PABs should be legally recognised within MS and have a seat on the MS board and participate fully in the General Assembly.

::	New Vision and Mission for MS
	The new vision and mission for MS was adopted during the General Assembly in April this year.

::	Cabbage Market is Booming
	Hopeways Young Farmers have great success in selling high quality seedlings to the communities. However, this great success has led to an increase in cabbage production in the area bringing the prices down, which has also affected Hopeways Young Farmers.

::	Planting Nurseries

::	What Do You Want to Read?
	MS-Zambia partners want to read about each other and developmental issues, tells the NewZ reader survey, which was conducted in January 2004.

::	Same Faces Every Time