Community empowered to track budget in Ntchisi
Ntchisi district commissioner (DC) Malango Botomani has endorsed a committee formed by communities in Traditional Authority (T/A) Chilooko in the district to track revenue collection.
The exercise, which Tilitonse Fund has financed, was unveiled on Thursday at Malomo Rural Growth Centre during the launch of the Environment, Water and Sanitation (EWS) Foundation Community Based Financial Resource Management and Monitoring Project which aims to empower communities to track revenue collected by the council.
Botomani said she was convinced that Ntchisi is rich in resources to enable the district council finance some of the social service projects if financial abuse is controlled.
“Money received from government alone cannot scale up development in the area and other areas, but through proper revenue collection we can solve the water problems and other social problems in the district,” she said.
“It is a known fact that some people avoid paying market fees and other taxes while some tax collectors have counterfeit receipts. Some people collaborate with market fee collectors to steal the money so much so that the money that reaches the council is not the correct figure collected on the ground.”
She encouraged EWS Foundation to support similar projects in other districts to ensure revenue collected from the markets is used for development projects.
EWS Foundation project manager Venancio Kachingwe said research shows that Ntchisi has wide revenue bases to finance projects in the ditrict.
Ntchisi North member of Parliament (Independent) Boniface Kadzamira said budget tracking provides checks and balances in councils. n
