By Loness Gwazanga

Minister of Local Government, Blessings Chinsinga addressing District Council officials and elected members from the southern region. Pic. Chilungamo Missi (MANA).

Blantyre, September 17, Mana: Minister of Local Blessings Chinsinga on Friday urged local councils in the southern region take innovations seriously in order to achieve a transformative local level development.

Chinsinga was speaking in Blantyre during a quarterly strategic engagement with council officials and elected members from all the local authorities in the southern region.

He said the councils are obliged to be on the lookout for or supporting organic local level innovations which are key to sustainable and transformative development.

“All councils would be doing is simply harness the innovations to scale up their transformative impact. Councils themselves have the opportunity to be innovative in how they carry out their activities by simply thinking outside the box with the goal of improving service provision,” said Chinsinga.

He then said through UNDPs Public Sector Innovation Challenge that aims at supporting government institutions to adopt innovative reforms for improving public service delivery as well as the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Malawi 2063, councils have the opportunity to ratchet their innovation credentials.

In his remarks, National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) board of directors chairperson Richard Chapweteka said the committee will continue working with all the councils to ensure proper utilization of public resources, which are the heartbeat of any innovational project.

He then said the committee is also coming up with sanctions to ensure that those abusing public resources are dealt with accordingly.

“A lot of people are abusing public resources and are being left scot free. So these sanctions will make sure that whoever is found abusing resources is held accountable and will be netted with appropriate punishment.

“Right now, we have completed drafting the sanctions using legal instruments and next is to conduct consultation meetings with key stakeholders and once we are done, will make the sanction details public,” said Chapweteka.

Speaking on behalf of the participants, Phalombe District Commissioner Rodrick Mateauma described the meeting as timely saying “For councils to do better, we cannot only rely on the leadership of DC or Chief Executives but the councilors, mayors and chairpersons are very crucial.

“As elected representatives, they are engines in facilitating development in their communities as such these meetings are very important because together we will map the way forward on how best we can develop the councils”.

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