Ministry of Local Government on Friday recognised councils that performed well in the Local Authority Performance Assessment (LAPA) exercises by allowing them to tap more resources from Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD) project.
GESD is a five year project which is being financed by the World Bank to the tune of US$100 Million to strengthen council’s institutional performance, responsiveness to citizens and management of resources for services delivery.
For instance, Balaka district council received K56 million which is 25% whilst Chiradzulu only got MK38 million representing 0.20 % for being the best and poorly performing local authorities in the 2019/2020 assessment respectively.
Speaking during the dissemination of LAPA results in Liwonde, Deputy Director for Local Government Services Douglas Mkweta said the results of the assessment translate into money to councils.
He said the project is incentivising performance of the service delivery of councils hence the best performing council gets more money than others.
“This year is the first year we are transferring money from the project to add and complement to the district development fund.
Every council will have a uniform formulas they will receive or would have received but there is also money for grabs for councils that do well,” he explained
He added that money for council that performed badly will be taken from them and give to the best performing local authorities.
He said the dissemination meeting was mainly aimed at explaining the formula the ministry used to allocate resources to councils.
Chairperson for Balaka District Council Michael Chauluka said he was very excited with the money the district received from the ministry.
He said the money will be used to enhance service delivery by, among others, construct ridges, rehabilitate markets and pay direct staff.
“In 2019, we were at number 17 and I was not happy with the results. When I was elected as chairperson of the council on 29th June 2020, I encouraged my fellow councillors, Members of Parliament and chiefs to prioritise projects that are in our District Development Plan,” he said.
The meeting was attended by the Directors of Planning and Development, Directors of Finance and council chairpersons for seven councils. These are: Mwanza, Zomba, Phalombe, Blantyre, Balaka, Ntcheu and Salima. A similar exercise will take place in Mzuzu and Blantyre on 4th May 2021.
Ministry of local government conducted the assessment in all 28 councils for 2019/2020 financial year from 30th November to 18 December last year.
Areas of assessment, among others, include procurement management, improvements in health and education, mobilisation of locally generated resources and improvement in access of information.
Story Credits : Patrick Ndawala
