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Constituency Development Fund (CDF) was an innovation of sorts. It was the precursor of devolution in the sense that it created a vehicle through which funds would be channelled from the national government to the grassroots.
Created through an Act of Parliament in 2003, the fund’s objective is to provide resources for infrastructure and economic development of constituencies through a bottom-up approach. Constituencies identify projects that require government funding and make proposals for financial support. According to the law, the government allocates at least 2.5 per cent of the annual revenues for constituency development.
With the ratification of the current Constitution in 2010, the initial Act was nullified and a new one enacted in 2013. This was amended in 2016 with the title changing to National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) to signal that it is managed by the central government as opposed to the counties.
On the balance, CDF has made a difference in grassroots developments. Schools, hospitals, water resources and various other social amenities have been established through it. Resources hitherto held by the national government and allocated whimsically to regions according to political preferences have since been loosened and directed to constituencies.
However, CDF has recorded high levels of wastefulness. Huge sums of money have been misused, misdirected and misapplied and, in the end, taxpayers never got value. The latest report by the Auditor-General Edward Ouko that captures expenditures on 2016/17 financial year has identified massive losses of CDF cash. Money was spent on non-viable projects, plainly stolen or misappropriated. That this is a perennial problem is thoroughly offensive. We demand action on those responsible for it.
The greatest problem is poor management. MPs, who ought to oversee cash utilisation, tend to deploy the money with political goals in mind. They either spend it in areas where they have strong support at the exclusion of other areas or devote the resources to activities that give short-term populist results but are hardly sustainable. Thus, ridiculous cases have been reported of MPs spending the cash on funerals or building houses for constituents. Often, projects stall when new MPs are elected.
Matters have been compounded with devolution, which came with a bigger basket for cash flow to the regions, creating room for project duplication or delay in execution.
Investigative authorities must take up the Auditor-General’s reports and institute comprehensive inquiries with a view of prosecuting those who misappropriate or misuse CDF cash.
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