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The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflections (JCTR) says politicians must be prevented from high-jacking the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) projects for their selfish ends.
John Sauti, the JCTR Faith and Justice Programme Officer in a statement issued in Lusaka on Monday said the critical challenge of effectively managing the CDF in Zambia from the perspective of democracy, is the heavy influence of elected political leaders.
Sauti said this continues to expose CDF to political vulnerabilities like politicization and reducing it to an election campaign agenda.
He said the CDF depoliticization agenda must start by reducing the political influence of elected leaders on CDF to prevent politicians from high-jacking the CDF development agenda for their political mileage.
“In so far as Zambia is a representative democracy, CDF must create a platform for ordinary citizens to directly influence the kind and quality of their democracy through being protagonists of their development destinies,” Sauti said.
He said that this must be done through the people at constituency level managing the CDF programmes with support from the local authorities.
Sauti said there are many challenges being faced in the implementation of CDF, but politicization of CDF emerges as a key impediment to effective enhancement of democracy whose objective is ensure quality service delivery for the citizens of this country.
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“Effective implementation of CDF, being a key component of decentralization, will make citizens become protagonists of their own development agenda,” Sauti said.
He said CDF project in Zambia must deliberately be tailored to achieve the end of democracy; the achievement of quality social delivery and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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