‘Time for councils to front poor performance and still attract central government sympathy is over’.
The remarks were made in Blantyre recently by the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government, Charles Kalemba when he opened a day long symposium on the Local Authority Performance Assessment revised tools and processes targeting senior officers from selected local councils.
Kalemba said time to reward and tolerate mediocrity had ended.
‘There was a time we could transfer non performing District Commissioners from one district to another, for example’, he said, ‘That will no longer happen under the watch of this administration’.
Kalemba also condemned stagnation in development to below average performance of officers, fraud and corruption saying any such errant officers would be disciplined administratively as well as have institution of criminal proceedings against them.
‘Such officers have let down this country. They have failed communities and contributed to pulling this country down into a perpetual self-created poverty circus. That space for fraud, corruption and mediocrity is narrowing’, said Kalemba.
The PS also condemned councils which had failed to meet funding triggers for the World Bank Funded Performance Based Grant (PBG) under the Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) project as a shame and unwanted deviation to the transformation agenda of the current government.
‘Communities expect development through the projects. This has now been denied to them. Government expects these projects to uplift the living standards of citizens and to deny citizens development due to unknown reasons and fail the triggers is almost criminal’.
The Government conducts LAPA assessment meant to assess the performance of the local authorities in wide range is areas including service delivery. The results of the assessment determine eligibility for and the amount of the PBG. Balaka district council emerged as the overall best performer in the LAPA assessment of November 2020 under the GESD project.
The grant provides fiscal incentives to advance Local Authority (LA) performance by rewarding good and penalizing poor LA performance.
The World Bank funded project will run for 5 years in all the 28 district local councils in Malawi. It is jointly implemented by the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry of Finance and the National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) which also acts as a fiduciary agent for the project.
