K10,000 yearly budget not enough, official says

THE majority of community development divisions around the country operate on a K10,000 budget yearly, so there are no tangible results, an official says.
Department of Community Development and Religion secretary Jerry Ubase said a big problem with officers was that they were not doing the jobs they were paid to do.
“We have officers stationed throughout the country, it’s just the budget, and at the same time, the mind set and attitude of those officers who are not doing their jobs,” he said.
“They cannot continue to blame the Government, they must take ownership of the programmes in their provinces.
“The Government is allocating money to provinces on a yearly basis, it can always use funds from other projects and divert it for gender-based violence (GBV) use for example; but the officers are not taking the initiative to see that perpetrators are brought to justice and the victims get the help they deserve.”
Ubase said as community development officers attached to the provincial government, they were answerable to the provincial administrator but did not take instructions from him when it came to delivering projects.
He said he would like to see this funding increase so that more projects could be implemented when approved so that the Government would not be blamed for not supporting their efforts.
“I would like to see a proposal brought to the National Executive Council so that from the appropriation of the GBV budget of K9 million, at least K5 million will be distributed equally throughout the country to support the GBV focal points,” he said.