By Linda Likomwa

Phalombe, May 20, Mana: Chiefs in Phalombe have asked district council authorities through the social welfare office to consider dissolving Catchment Management Committees (CMCs) because they have overstayed their term of office.

Speaking on Monday during an extra-ordinary full council meeting, T/A Kaledzera and Mkhumba reminded the council to consider dissolving the committee as many members are abusing cash transfer beneficiaries by asking for kick-backs, among other things.

The chiefs claimed that there has not been any change of committee members since 2018 when the district enrolled beneficiaries into the programme.

"We have been receiving complaints from beneficiaries that most of these committee members collect money from them during pay day and looking at the nature of cash transfer households, as a district, we are not doing justice to the poor," said Kaledzera.

He added that now that the district has started re-targeting beneficiaries for the programme, there was need to start notifying communities that new committees will be formulated.

District Social Welfare Officer responsible for Cash Transfers, Freckson Chidzalo concurred with the chiefs, noting that his office has been receiving complaints from beneficiaries on the misconduct of some committee members.

He however said that all the issues were resolved which led to some committee members being removed, while others were arrested after investigations and the money and relief items were given back to legitimate beneficiaries.

"We cannot deny that such things happen and some of the complaints were made straight to headquarters through the toll-free line and the headquarters were notifying us to investigate on the issues which we did and a good example was that from T/A Nazombe which led to the arrest of the committee members," he said.

Chidzalo said in March this year, when the district was disbursing the last cash transfers, all committee members were told that their term of office has expired and after re-targeting new committees will be established.

An official from the Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare, Dumisani Maona said Phalombe District Council started the re-targeting of beneficiaries in April, but that the process was stopped to allow a systematic way of selection where beneficiaries should not be selected by chance.

Maona said the new beneficiaries will be those from child headed families, the chronically ill, people with disabilities and the elderly who are 65 years and above, noting that all these should be labour constrained and poor, unlike the old system whose criteria was on the basis of a household being ultra-poor.

The council will now enroll 11,099 beneficiaries into the programme from 7,964.