PARLIAMENT- Legislators have started debate on whether Parliament should reinstate the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). The debate, which has been simmering in the House since the last Parliament was brought up by a section of freshly-elected MPs claiming the fund could help offload the constituency fundraising responsibility from them.
The MPs also argued that the fund will help in entrenching the notion of service delivery to the masses but also shield them from public blame whenever government fails to deliver.
“The MP is the closest person in government that members of society run to whenever they go to a hospital and they don’t find drugs or whenever a school in their village collapses and if the MP fails to help, they heap all the blame on the MP,” said Buhweju MP, Francis Mwijukye.
“MPs have become government and ministries. People see them as the source of hope so they must be empowered to answer calls of the hopeless citizens and that can be through the Constituency Development Fund,” he added.
In the sixth Parliament MPs used to get not more than Shs15M per year to work as constituency development fund. The fund was scrapped because legislators couldn’t account for it and also because they argued that it was too little and simply a temptation to the legislators.
Bugabula South MP Morris Kibalya said the fund would be implementable if it is distributed through the district local government structure. “District accounting officers are just appointed and not elected like us. We have a higher accountability responsibility to the voters and therefore we need soothing to develop our constituencies,” the MP said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing post-elections induction for MPs, former Speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly Francis Ole Kaparo said although CDF is an important aspect of national development, legislators should not be directly given the money.
“What should be an issue is who implements it. It has been wrong to have it under the MP and it has been taken to court in Kenya,” he said.
The same view is shared by the Bugweri County MP, Abdu Katuntu. “I will oppose it if it ever comes up in Parliament,” he said, adding: “To have MPs inheriting the responsibility of the Executive is to cause a conflict of interest because the Auditor General will be investigating how MPs have used the money they appropriated yet we are supposed to be overseers. Money can only be sent through the districts and we MPs just oversee whether the resources are being utilised well.”
iimaka@ug.nationmedia.com
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