By Linda Likomwa

Phalombe, June 7, Mana: Phalombe District Council has been advised to strengthen all the assessed Local Authority Performance Assessment (LAPA) indicators to improve its standing with the National Local Government Finance Committee.

The council scored 100 percent in procurement, financial management account and audit issues, 83 percent in agriculture service delivery and 67 percent on health and education service deliveries.

Principal Local Government Service Officer in the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture, Victoria Kamanga tipped the council to put emphasis and more effort to all the assessed LAPA areas because most councils only pay attention to improve failed areas leaving the areas they did well and in the process weaken them.

Kamanga said team work among various sectors was also necessary to achieve desirable results. 

“Concentrate on all the areas because most councils fail in areas they did well in the previous assessment as much efforts are put in areas they failed and some sectors choose to work in isolation and also to ask for the indicators they are not clear about before the final assessment team do their assessment to councils,” said Kamanga.

Phalombe District Council Director of Planning and Development, Kelvin Harawa said the council was satisfied with the 2023 LAPA results because it has been ranked 26 a drop from 15 in 2022. He, however, asked sectors not to sleep on their jobs to improve the results.

Harawa said there was no time for finger pointing but to sit down with the district LAPA task force and strategies on the possible ways to break the trend because sectors that are doing well would be affected with those that are not performing well.

The council scored zero percent on mobilization of local revenue and budget execution which was attributed to Tropical Cyclone Freddy which hit hard the district and affected most businesses.

The 2023 LAPA results have recommended strengthening of institutional capacity in local authorities, provide future clarity on geotechnical analysis, improve systems operation, conduct regular and systematic performance evaluation and to continue revising the indicators to make sure they are realistic in terms of measurability and significance.

The aim of LAPA assessment was to determine whether local authorities have capacities and safeguards to manage the development performance based grants, provide fiscal incentives to improve performance by rewarding good and penalizing poor performance in councils.