PROPOSAL ON TRAINING CONSTITUENCY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEES AND LOCATIONAL COMMITTEES
Introduction
Participatory Decision-Making
Good governance requires the population to be part of the decision-making process. It needs citizens at all levels of society to take part in the management of that society. Citizens have to be involved in talking about and deciding how their society is to be administered.
If the people are not consulted, then the decisions that are made may be against their interest, social, cultural, economic and political conditions. It ensures that there is fair play and that no single interest group is favoured in the decision-making process. It also helps people unite and relate to each other with a common goal of peace and progress.
Government Policy Position
For a long time the government position has encouraged citizens to be spectators and passive listeners to what it was doing. It gave a lot of space for those entrusted with instruments of government and public resources to use them as personal property, abuse of office, corruption and rundown public resources
That position has shifted drastically. In its place are now policy positions that are focusing on the people, calling for their active participation and involvement. Key driving policy positions are the Economic Recovery Strategy for wealth creation and employment and the millennium development goal. The policy positions sprung from the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. The main focus is on reducing poverty through people centered approaches.
Rationale
The rationale behind this project is that in order for local communities in this Constituency to address development programmes at the grassroots level, they need to be capacitated, to know and understand their rights and to improve their abilities in resource development and management. Developing and managing resources locally also means that citizens will have greater independence to carry out long term development programmes. It will enable them to be self reliant, and assertive on issues affecting them which is an important ingredient to development.
Purpose
The main purpose of this proposal is to capacitate grassroot committees from the sub location, location up to constituency level with an overview of Direct Funds to the constituency and their role as citizens i.e. Citizen Participation in Public Resource Management.
This will entail carrying out the following activities:
1. Carry out a Participatory Rural Appraisal in all locations. This will come up with real issues affecting the people and the people will come up with solutions. It will also assist them to rank the problems in order of priority. This exercise will involve all stakeholders in the locations who will include women, youths, NGOs, Churches, the poor, institutions and leaders. The exercise will take five days per location excluding mobilisation days. The exercise will also identify capacity gaps that need to be addressed.
2. Training of all development committees on project proposal writing. This will capacitate the committees on how to write and submit realistic proposals, how to implement, monitor and evaluate.
3. Training the committees on Financial management, public procurement procedures, record keeping and report writing.
4. Train the committees on leadership and governance, resource mobilisation and networking.
5. The committees will be given detailed orientation on the following devolved funds:
▪ Constituency Development Fund – CDF ▪ Constituency Roads Fund – CRF ▪ Constituency Bursary Fund – CBF ▪ Local Authority Transfer Fund – LATF ▪ Free Primary Education – FPE ▪ Local Revenue – Cess ▪ Constituency AIDS Control Committee Funds (CACC) ▪ NGOs and CBOs Funds
This will involve procedures on how the funds are accessed and their involvement as stakeholders. This is because community members are not well informed of the local resources available within the constituency and are not actively involved in the planning process.
The funds to facilitate the above activities can be sourced from the CDF as part IV of the CDF Act on types of projects section (3). It says in part “All projects shall be development projects and may include costs relating to studies, planning and design or other technical input for the project.”
It also says each location shall come up with a list of priority projects to be submitted to the Constituency Development Committee.
This is why the above activities are necessary for the committees to function effectively.
Benefits
The benefits of capacitating grassroot committees will ensure that funds are well spent on intended projects and the citizens will closely monitor and be satisfied that their input in project design is recognized and appreciated.
Another benefit is that the work load on the Member of Parliament, CDF committee and CDF manager will be lessened.
The other important benefit will be that there will be no blame games between the MP, CDF management and the citizens over the use of funds since the process has been widely consultative and participatory from the needs assessment, project design and implementation. Everybody will be happy that “Mali ya Uma has been used properly.”
Public Resources
Public resources are a collection of funds, assets and services from members of the society or citizens that are pulled together and handed over to the government to manage on behalf of the people. It is “Mali ya Uma” Citizen’s property, it is not government property. The people here are paramount; the government is just the trustee while the owner is the people.
The use of these resources should go to the activities and services that are planned with the people while the government only remains an overseer.
The citizens hold a central position in the process of governance and resource management. The starting point begins with the people where by virtue of their existence a government gets formed. The government in turn depends on the people for funds/resources to operate.
“The whole process starts and ends with the people”.
