In an effort to mitigate the effects of the vicious circle of poverty and protect the poor from falling further into the vice, government has allocated K148 413 946 in the first phase of public works to Neno District Council.
Acting director of Public Works, Daniel Dzinkambani confirmed the allocation of the said amount to Neno district council saying the implementation of the public works would start this month and is expected to end early March this year.
“The wages for the beneficiaries will be paid within two weeks of the programme in order to enable the households purchase food and other needs during this lean period,” said Dzinkambani.
But he was quick to add that this time, the council has emphasized the need that those to be participating in these second phase activities should be the new beneficiaries who had not benefited in the last phase of the exercise.
“As government already stipulated before allocating these funds that it wants to see the impact on the beneficiaries, as a council, we have decided to have the first cohort of those people who have not been considered in other social cushion activities like cash transfer and other projects,” explained Dzinkambani.
Newly appointed District Commissioner for Neno, Memory Kaleso said the chiefs should be in the forefront to facilitate the works so that development activities in the areas should be uplifted for the betterment of their communities.
“The Public Works Programme is one of the safety net measures that government has designed in the Economic Recovery Plan in order to mitigate the effects of policy changes and protect the poor from falling further into poverty whilst they are also being financially empowered,” said Kaleso.
Currently 15 460 people will benefit from this programme in Neno whereby among others, beneficiaries work in areas of village access roads construction, land resource conservation and fish pond construction.—Mana
