Mulongoti denies responsibility over use of road funds

Mulongoti denies responsibility over use of road funds
By Mutale Kapekele
Sun 21 Nov. 2010, 04:00 CAT

WORKS and supply minister Mike Mulongoti on Thursday told parliament that it is not the duty of his ministry to supervise the use of road funds in the provinces. And Namwala member of parliament Major Robby Chizyuka has described donors as neo-colonialists for demanding transparency in the projects that they fund.

Responding to a question from Mwense member of parliament Jacob Chongo who wanted to know how many kilometres of road rehabilitation works were completed under the Rural Roads Unit (RRU) in 2009, Mulongoti said only K20.9 billion from the allocated K45 billion has been used. He said the RRU received a total K32.6 billion.

And when asked what had happened to the difference of K11.7 billion, Mulongoti said it was not the duty of his ministry to monitor how the money was spent as the projects were supervised by provincial ministers.

“Provincial administration has pure control of those funds. My ministry has no control,” said Mulongoti. “When money is misapplied in the provinces, MPs should follow up. It is unfair to expect my ministry to supervise projects in the provinces. Provincial ministers should take account of that money. All stakeholders should not detach themselves from tracking the budget throughout the year.”

But Chongwe member of parliament Sylvia Masebo advised Mulongoti to take an interest in how money was spent in the road sector.

“The answer (from Mulongoti) on how money is spent was not good enough. The minister needs to assist these people and should not just say it’s not the job of my ministry because the agents that the ministry uses to repair roads are the ones giving the sector a bad name,” said Masebo.

And Chizyuka described donors who were demanding accountability in the road sector as neo colonialists.

“Never in the history of this country has the Auditor General’s office raised such euphoria as they did in the RDA (Road Development Agency) audit,” Chizyuka said. “As a result of that euphoria, we have seen neo colonialism emerging. That is because the RDA started speaking in tongues that even the government failed to understand its own agency.

And now we have lost a fine engineer because the donors made so much noise.”
Chizyuka said Zambia belonged to Zambians and should not “dance to the tunes of foreigners” and that there was no need to “lose some of the finest brains” in the road sector.