By George Bulombola

Mzuzu, August 30, Mana: Deputy Minister for Local Government, Unity and Culture, Owen Chomanika, Thursday urged local authorities to take central government close to the people by ensuring quality service delivery for improved access to social amenities.

Chomanika was speaking in Mzuzu when he opened a tow-day quarterly coordination meeting for local authority drawn from the north including Nkhotakota and Kasungu district councils.

He said central government has never been local and that local authorities are there to manifest government’s development initiatives for the benefit of local communities.

“Local authorities work through local structures as such they play in leading role in transforming the country through implementation projects under various sectors,” said Chomanika.

He then called for well-coordinated and team working spirit amongst all players who include directors, controlling officers who are either District Commissioners (DC), Chief Executive Officers, councilors, members of parliament (MP) and traditional authorities to ensure sanity in the council’s management and operations.

“This meeting has therefore been organized for the local authorities to reflect how the councils are performing.

There are some problems surrounding lack of commitment to duty by some members of staff, we have departments that are not talking to each other and all these challenges are issues of coordination, hence the meeting,” he said.

Chomanika also expressed concern over some non-functional positions as the assigned officers are incompetent and that some are too busy in what is not under their job descriptions besides increased executive absenteeism.

“I therefore advised all players in local authorities to be patriotic and as public officers, they need to serve the public. Everyone should work within to the expectations of his/her roles.

“We are running away from a situation where a council chairperson feels is more like a (DC) and a DC feels more like an MP. A director of finance working like a procurement officer and procurement officers behaves like a directors of public works,” he said.

Chairperson for National Local Government Finance Committee, Richard Chapweteka said local authorities have had challenges in financial management and that the issue continues to be addressed through officers’ trainings and recruitment of qualified officers.

“In this meeting we want to reflect on what we need to improve service delivery and encourage each other to sustain the gains we have made so far such as increased financing to councils, councilors introduced on payroll, financing of construction of city and town roads and increased financing to social support programmes,” said Chapweteka.

However, Chapweteka expressed over underutilization of resources by councils, saying the challenge emanates from late commencement of procurement processes as councils wait to start the process until they have the money into their bank accounts thereby impacting negatively on projects’ implementation.

“My advice to avert this issue is that councils should start procurement processes before the money is in their accounts as they already have plans and budgets and know what they would like to do in a given financial year,” he added.

DC for Chitipa, Mac Millan Magomero said absenteeism and incompetency by officers in councils could be ascertained as true as some of them take their work as usual.

“That aside, for the first time in the history of the country, local authorities have attained clean audit reports,” said Magomero.