MS Zambia Newsletter May 2010

Chasing the money

Budget tracking might sound like a boring thing to do. However, when a roof blows off a market due to mismanaged funding, the figures on papers suddenly have real consequences in our daily lives.

By Maureen Mulenga, Caritas Kafue, and Lena Vind-Andersen, MS Zambia.

18. May 2010

One windy day in Kafue, Mr. Chishimba watched as the roof blew off Soloboni market. Ordinarily he might just have put the occurrence down to a question of exceptionally strong winds. But due to a recent budget tracking training, he knew this was not the only cause.

“It was due to the fact that there were too few nails used in the construction,” he states. “I am hurt and disappointed with the kind of work done at the market. 22 million zmk was earmarked for its construction, but looking at the structure it is obvious that much less was used.”

Mr. Chishimba is a perfectly ordinary resident of Kafue Estates. He works for Nitrogen Chemicals as assistant plant superintendent and he is also involved in running a project as a social worker. He is 51 years and married with 7 children: 5 girls and 2 boys. Towards the end of 2009, 15 community members in Kafue District were trained by Caritas Kafue on how to track Community Development Fund (CDF) projects. Mr. Chishimba was one of the participants. And it changed his whole perspective on how public funds are used.

“The experience was an eye opener and I was able to appreciate what CDF can do for our communities if properly used by our leaders,” he says. He realised that at present there is no community participation in terms of planning, budgeting, implementation and even the involvement of community members in projects.

One windy day in Kafue, Mr. Chishimba watched as the roof blew off Soloboni market. Ordinarily he might just have put the occurrence down to a question of exceptionally strong winds. But due to a recent budget tracking training, he knew this was not the only cause.

“It was due to the fact that there were too few nails used in the construction,” he states. “I am hurt and disappointed with the kind of work done at the market. 22 million zmk was earmarked for its construction, but looking at the structure it is obvious that much less was used.”

Mr. Chishimba is a perfectly ordinary resident of Kafue Estates. He works for Nitrogen Chemicals as assistant plant superintendent and he is also involved in running a project as a social worker. He is 51 years and married with 7 children: 5 girls and 2 boys. Towards the end of 2009, 15 community members in Kafue District were trained by Caritas Kafue on how to track Community Development Fund (CDF) projects. Mr. Chishimba was one of the participants. And it changed his whole perspective on how public funds are used.

“The experience was an eye opener and I was able to appreciate what CDF can do for our communities if properly used by our leaders,” he says. He realised that at present there is no community participation in terms of planning, budgeting, implementation and even the involvement of community members in projects.

Armed with his newfound knowledge, Mr. Chishimba set out to put it to good use:

“After the workshop I confronted my Area Councillor to ask him about how CDF for my Ward is being used,” he explained. And having tracked the budgets, he is not happy with what he found: “In one case the Councillor paid out money to a carpenter, who was given 400.000 zmk as a token of appreciation on top of the 1.500.000 zmk budgeted for him. It is evident that money is not properly used and the community is not benefiting. I am not happy with the findings of the tracking,” he says.

 

Mr. Chishimba is however very happy with the fact that he participated in the budget tracking training in the first place. “I wasn’t able to speak before because I didn’t have much knowledge on CDF and I didn’t know who to approach to air my concerns. But now I am able to speak out!” he says.