Maravi

MMD on a clear path to abusing national resources - Siabutuba

MMD on a clear path to abusing national resources - Siabutuba
By Kombe Chimpinde
Wed 09 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT

The MMD is on a clear path to abusing national resources, says Partner Siabutuba. And former finance minister Ng'andu Magande says the Sixth National Development Plan will remain an exercise on paper as long as the MMD remains in power.

Siabutuba, who is Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) board chairman, said his organisation was concerned by the fast pace of misuse of public funds by the MMD. Siabutuba predicted that if unchecked, MMD would continue squandering national coffers at the expense of urgent development, such as the Sixth National Development Plan.

“We are predicting massive looting of public resources ahead of these elections, before and when parliament is dissolved and everyone goes to the constituencies to campaign. We foresee a situation where MMD will multiply theft of funds to give to constituencies where the MMD is not popular ... view to woo support at the expense of the poor as we saw in Mporokoso, where MMD was dishing out money in the name of women empowerment,” Siabutuba said.

“So you can imagine how resources will be abused, even the money that is being earmarked for projects will just land in the hands of MMD without enhancing or improving people's lives.”

Siabutuba said it was sad that the MMD government had continued to manipulate elections using the poor people.

“We are aware, and we have said it before that we are not going to have free and fair elections with very high levels of poverty. And what is of specific concern is the manner in which the Minister of Community Development Honourable Kaingu is distributing colossal sums of money without following the laid-down procedures of how communities are supposed to access funds for women empowerment,” Siabutuba said.

“What Kaingu is doing is a total disregard for laid-down procedures. So in the light of the removal of the abuse of office clause from the Anti Corruption Commission Act, you don't expect anything less than the abuse of public funds … The pace at which we are abusing the resources is an indication of government inability and lack of seriousness in improving the wellbeing of this country.”

And Magande said the current government lacked seriousness in implementing projects as evidenced by its failure to successfully end the Fifth National Development Plan.

“Technically it's well written. We are going to elections, what will happen is that the whole of the financial structure will be upside down. You can see how many government ministers are already going round to campaign using public resources. This government has shown us that it can't manage resources judiciously and prudently,” Magande said.

He said the first three years of the FNDP, which he spearheaded when he was Minister of Finance, were a success because there was will on the part of government to manage resources prudently.

Magande said executing medium-term plans, such as the successful development plan that would culminate in poverty reduction, demanded transparency, accountability and level-headedness which the government lacked.

He expressed concern over the government's plan to increase external borrowing during a period when the country could utilise its mineral resources.

“It's an issue that has to be dealt with carefully because you can build a lot of schools. Now these will only attain productive levels after 20 years. By then most of the loans will have been due for repayment. What we need is to borrow to ensure we prepare a productive team so that through taxes, loans can be paid. You can borrow to build roads which foreign companies will destroy with their heavy trucks, but we are not taxing them adequately,” Magande said.

Labels: CORRUPTION, MMD, NG'ANDU MAGANDE, PARTNER SIABUTUBA

posted by MrK @ 2:26 PM