District councils are now free from receiving community complaints that councils procure them sub-standard project materials because matters of procurement will be done by communities themselves.

Kasungu senior procurement officer Chikondi Zidekha disclosed this in an interview at Mponela in Dowa after a presentation he made on procurement processes during an integrated catchment management (ICM) training for extension workers and district environmental sub-committee (DESC) members.   

“This time, communities will be running the project (climate smart enhanced public works programme), doing acquisition of goods and services, identifying artisans, suppliers  of tree seedlings in case of forestry, banana suckers and vetiver in case of land resources and hardware materials like cement,” said Zidekha.

Adding: “The approach will ease pressure at the council. Previously, when procurement was being done by councils, most communities were complaining that councils bought them substandard materials.”

However, he stressed that that would be a thing of the past because communities, instead of managing the project only after phasing out, they will take it up right from the start.

“Procurement of goods was a challenge because during acquisition of tree seedlings, we could buy for the whole Kasungu and the way communities were offering prices was a challenge. Now catchment management procurement committees will determine right prices for goods on their own.”  

Complex projects, regardless of amount, would be managed by the council regardless of amount to ensure quality. For projects above MK10 million, communities will have to utilize standard bidding documents, that is; use of the local competitive bidding process.

Nevertheless, director of planning and development for Kasungu Annie Salama said the council has the role to coordinate and provide supportive supervision to all stakeholders and communities implementing the project.

This implies that the councils would not completely detach themselves from the communities on matters of facilitating sensitizations on the project, promoting community participation in problem identification, planning, procurement and implementation to ensure project success.  

“So far, we have sensitized different stakeholders like district environmental sub-committee (DESC) members, communities, politicians, traditional leaders among others. Together with communities, we have selected five project catchments,” she explained.

She listed the five as follows: Katcherekhwawa in Sub-Traditional Authority (STA) Chisikwa, Mpherere in TA Simlemba, Chankhanga in TA Mwase, Chatalala in TA Njombwa and Mphazi in TA Chidzuma.

The DPD said most of the areas selected have bare lands and mountains, don’t have trees, no replanting is done. They lost soil fertility and farmers do not harvest enough crops.