The Parliamentary Committee on Local Authorities in Malawi says the workmanship of abandoned structures for the rural growth centre in Monkey bay is horrible.

The sentiments were made at the end of a tour, end August, of the stalled MK3 billion Monkey Bay Rural Growth Centre project 5 years after its commencement.

Speaking to the NLGFC Newsletter, chair of the Parliamentary Committee, Hon. Horace Chipuwa, Member of Parliament for Lilongwe Mapuyu North bemoaned the visible dereliction of supervision duties by the council and central Government.

He bemoaned the laissez-faire supervisory approach evident through what he termed, ‘horrible and no joy infrastructure’, at huge cost to Malawians.

‘The construction standards are not good. It shows there was no supervision by the local council and probably no coordination between central and local governments’, Chipuwa said.

The committee also expressed displeasure on the still non-operational Monkey bay bus depot which they said had accelerated its dilapidation and subjected it to vandalism.

The rural growth centre works included an abandoned community ground, dilapidated bus depot, Fish drier, rice mill, etc.  

Peter Limbali, the revenue collection officer for the depot asked for increased sensitization to enable users and operators to operate from the depot and in so doing increase revenues for the councils.

In his remarks, member of the Parliamentary Committee, Hon. Chimunthu Banda, said the Mangochi council would do well to learn from other councils such as Nkhotakota which had done what he called a commendable job in increasing locally generated revenue such as the reigning in of taxi operators into designated areas and other vehicle operators to increase the council’s revenue.

‘In Nkhotakota taxi operators now have red number plates which means that yellow and black are reserved for family cars. If you increase enforcement by the Police, the revenue generation increases dramatically’, said Banda.

In his remarks, Mangochi District Commissioner, Raphael Piringu attributed the poor workmanship to absence of involvement of the local authority in the rural growth centre project which is turning into a white elephant.

He bemoaned the fact that despite there being a devolution policy, some sectors were yet to be devolved to local councils.

On increased local revenue generation, the DC informed the parliamentary committee that the council had undertaken learning visits to Balaka, Ntcheu and Dedza to enhance their capabilities on revenue collection, enhancement and efficient utilization of the collected resources. He said they would also visit Nkhotakota.

Ministry of Local Government made a commitment to complete the Monkey bay community ground using Government of Malawi resources as the ADB project which funded the facility had ended.

District Commissioner for Mangochi, Raphael Piringu said the council would engage the Ministry of Local Government to finish the rural growth centre and improve on the shoddy workmanship which the committee had highlighted.

He said as an example, in a different project, the security agents housing units’ project, Mangochi council is at 85% of completion to the satisfaction of central government. He attributed this to the involvement of the local council.

On its part Ministry of Local Government spokesperson Anjoya Mwanza told this paper that the ministry will fulfil this promise as soon as possible despite that it is overwhelmed with current infrastructure projects.

In his remarks, NLGFC’s, Director of Infrastructure and Economic Development, Eng. Paul Chipeta said, ‘the NLGFC had learned from some short comings and if you go to projects now, what we are doing, there is flawless coordination and supervision’.

He also stated that the market and bus depot didn’t go through the defects liability processes because it was done by two different contractors.

Chipeta said the second contractor was not in a position to commit quality assurance on works done by another contractor.

The Parliamentary committee says it will present its findings in a report to Parliament when it is in session with recommendations for redress. The committee says such projects were a ‘pain in the flesh’ to most Malawians.

Similar projects have successfully been undertaken at Malomo in Ntchisi, Jenda in Mzimba and Chitekesa in Phalombe.