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Tendai Mugabe Harare Bureau
LEGISLATORS in the Eighth Parliament are likely to finish their terms without accessing the $50,000 Constituency Development Fund as Treasury struggles to raise money for other critical sectors. If the money is to be released, the government has to part with over $10 million for the 210 legislative constituencies where each legislator receives $50,000.
The CDF was introduced during the Seventh Parliament to cushion MPs in stirring developmental projects in their constituencies, but the fund was grossly abused by some MPs due to lack of a legislative framework governing its use.
Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs secretary Virginia Mabiza, told our Harare Bureau yesterday that although the money was allocated to them in the 2015 National Budget, nothing had been disbursed.
She said several engagements with the Treasury had not yielded positive results – a move that raised doubts on whether the money would ever be released in the last quarter of the year, a period where the government had to grapple with payment of civil servants bonuses.
“Nothing has been released and it’s only the Treasury that can make a statement on that,” she said.
“We’ve been expecting the money, but nothing has been forthcoming. They’re saying there’re no funds. Maybe they’ve not collected enough but if the economy improves, we might get something but not 100 percent.”
Mabiza dismissed claims that the release of the money was being held up by the delay in the passing of the CDF Bill, which is currently before Cabinet.
She said the disbursement of the money had nothing to do with the CDF Bill because the Constitution, which was the supreme law of the land can be used to regulate the use of the money. “Principles to the CDF Bill are currently before Cabinet, but that can’t stop the disbursement of the money if it’s available,” she said. “We’ve a constitution that we can use to regulate the use of the funds, while we wait the enactment of the CDF Bill into law.”
Chief whips of political parties in Parliament expressed mixed views over the issue.
Zanu-PF chief whip Cde Jorum Gumbo said failure by the government to disburse CDF would not in any way compromise the work of MPs.
“CDF is just complementary to what MPs have always been doing in their constituencies,” he said.
“It’s the same like what’s prevailing in all government departments that haven’t received the money allocated to them in the budget so it’s something that we shouldn’t moan about.”
MDC-T chief whip Innocent Gonese said: “The MP is the focal point in the constituency and for the past four or five years we’ve not received that money.
“We’ve not been able to identify projects that can be funded by that fund and people are being shortchanged. We’re now lagging behind as a country in as far as constituency development is concerned.”
During the last Parliament, four MPs were arrested over the abuse of CDF, but the charges collapsed because there was no legislative framework that criminalises such abuses.
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