Enterprise Development Specialist for the National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) Mirriam Saiwa says Community Savings and Investment Promotion (COMSIP) groups have the power to transform people’s lives if, coordination and dedication prevails.

Saiwa said this when she visited Tilitonse and Mayankho COMSIP groups in Balaka where she interacted with group members. She aid communities need to embrace COMSIP and work towards set goals, so that poverty is minimized.

Saiwa said time to wait for Government to always come to their rescue for economic assistance is over. ‘Communities should change their way of thinking by joining Savings and Loans groups which have proved to be the starting point for one’s development,’ said Saiwa.

“We have incorporated the concept of Sustainable Livelihoods in the Enhanced Public Works Program (EPWP) where we want to encourage communities to embrace a saving and investment culture through savings of part of their wages through the COMSIP groups and it is correct to say that these groups have room to change people’s lives”, Saiwa said.

She also encouraged all members to work hard in order to improve and sustain their livelihoods

In an interview Balaka District Community Development Officer Carol Nyalugwe hailed NLGFC for incorporating COMSIP in the program.

“This will indeed go a long way in developing the beneficiaries, and in turn poverty levels will be reduced,” she said.

Speaking earlier, Tilitonse COMSIP group chair, Fyness Jamali said they are working hard to operationalize their bakery business.

“We have raised some money which was used to acquire land and also goats which we share through pass on model. We also received a grant which was used to construct a bakery house, now we are working to have the bakery operationalised,” she said.

Saiwa said linkages to different players at local and other levels is an option to speed up their bakery business take off.

The World Bank and Malawi Government have today signed a 259 billion kwacha financing agreement in the areas of governance, water improvement and financial inclusion.

Minister of Finance Felix Mlusu has hailed the agreement as it comes at a time Malawi is grappling with the effects of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The $100 million Governance to Enable Service Delivery [GESD] project was also signed by the two partners.

GESD seeks to build local governments capacity and performance in delivering Service to residents as well as improving duty bearer and service provider dialogue and engagement.

The Executive Director, Mr Alifeyo Banda and the Director of Infrastructure and Economic Development at the NLGFC, Eng. Paul Chipeta attended the signing ceremony.

The NLGFC facilitate implementation of the GESD project in local governments. Its core partners include the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Local Government, and other departments and sections.

The project is a 5year grant by the World Bank.

Parliament has passed the $100 million Governance to Enable Service Delivery project. The GESD project is a grant from the World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved in April this year and was pending Parliament’s nod.

Presenting the authorisation bill, Minister of Finance, Honourable Felix Mlusu said the GESD project is a major boost to the Government’s efforts to strengthen Local Authorities performance and service delivery.

Mlusu said the project would be implemented with strict adherence to the approved Project Appraisal Document (PAD).

The Minister said   the GESD project development objective is to “strengthen Local Authorities’ institutional performance, responsiveness to citizens and management of resources for service delivery. The project intends to among others, enhance local authority capacity and finance performance-based grants to 28 District Local Authorities to deliver priority development projects that enhance service delivery.

The bill was supported by all sides of the August House and was unanimously passed without opposition.

GESD is a results-based approach that will incentivize effectiveness and accountability for performance of Local Authorities. The project has four core components; Performance-based Financing for Service Delivery which has $73.2 million allocation, Intergovernmental Accountability Systems which has an allocation of $3.8 million, Performance Improvement Support with an allocation of $18 million and Adaptive Management and Innovation Support with $4 million.

The project has three main indicators which will assist in monitoring if the project is being implemented in line with the main objective which include; Number of local authorities that increase their score on the local authority performance assessment by 5 percentage points; Number of local authorities that complete 80% of the capital investment projects in their annual investment plans and Increased citizen satisfaction through implementation of annual investment plans.

The project will run for a period of 5 years with Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and Development, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) and Local Authorities as lead implementing agencies.

Nkhotakota district council has in three months, more than doubled financial independence through efficient, strategic revenue collection, an initiative that is living up to the encouragement of government’s National Local Government Financial Committee (NLGFC).

Nkhotakota’s District Commissioner (DC), Blessings Nkhoma, says plying of trade by vendors in streets ignoring flea market was a huge headache. He also says minibuses, bicycle taxi operators (Kabanza) and motor cycle taxi operators were operating in the in the streets ignoring a vacant bus depot.

This scenario had been affecting the council’s activities due to low revenue collection as some businesses were also run unregistered and unmonitored.

“Insufficient funds due to inefficient revenue collection has been affecting our budgets, including failure to pay direct our staff and settle basic bills,” said the DC.

The council resorted into developing a strategy that would engage the business operators to find out why they had been ignoring the readily established structures and educate them on the need to operate legally.

“The first step we took was to have an interface with vendors to convince them to operate their trade in the legitimately established market, and convince minibus operators, bicycle taxi operators and motorcycle taxi operators to operate from the established depot,” explained Nkhoma. 

He said there had also been sensitisation campaigns through various local media platforms on the need for mutual and responsible existence between them and the council.

“When we convinced them to start operating legitimately, we developed a business register where everyone operating these businesses has been registered for ease of monitoring,” he said.

The council has collected MK38.6 million from July to August this year compared to MK17.5 million the same period last year.

The revenue returns have been from market fees from vendors, business licencing and application fees, and departure fees for transport service providers operating from the depot.

The National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) says the Enhanced Public Works Programme (EPWP) pilot phase roll out in ten districts is encouraging in that all the councils have commenced implementation of the EPWP micro catchment activities.

Coordinator for the Project at the NLGFC Stanley Chuthi said this during a week-long micro catchment activity monitoring exercise across the ten pilot districts.

Chuthi said the commencement of the pilot project is a statement by the communities in the ten districts that they have understood the project objectives and will ensure its success.

‘The pilot will run for a period of 8 months in 10 district councils and there are 5 micro-catchments in each district, with an average size of not more than 250 hectares,’ said Chuthi.

Chuthi said the maximum number of beneficiaries per district is 1000 who will be required to work for 12 days per month for a period of 8 months.

Speaking during the exercise, secretary for Chilambalale micro catchment in Blantyre, Rose Sailesi, said the project would help them arrest growing gulleys that have ravaged the area due to land degradation, which has led to receding water levels and declining food harvests.

‘The project has come at the right time’, said Sailesi.

‘We are now doing something about our degraded catchment, we are united as a community, and I am looking forward to improved water table levels, increase in harvests as well as ease of access to firewood’, added Sailesi.

The current roll out works under implementation in the micro catchment areas include nursery preparation, swale construction, Stoneridge construction, marker ridging, manure making, tree profiling, pit planting, construction of check dams among others.

The pilot project phase will mostly encourage a holistic catchment management approach and prioritization of land resource conservation technologies by districts in the micro – catchments.

The EPWP is being implemented in 10 pilot districts of Chitipa, Karonga, Kasungu, Dowa, Nkhotakota, Lilongwe, Balaka, Chiradzulu, Phalombe and Blantyre.

The 10 districts under the pilot were selected based on a composite index aggregated from an average of; the degree of environmental degradation, poverty levels and food insecurity.

Meanwhile Coordinator Chuthi says in the fight against COVID -19, the pilot implementation phase; with development partner support, has also distributed soap and masks to all area catchment committees in the ten pilot districts.  

The NLGFC is envisaging that the EPWP pilot project, will inform future Public Works Programmes through lessons generated from the enhanced pilot.

The Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly has praised the work of the National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) on its constitutional role in the district development agenda for local governments.

The remarks were made by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Honorable Shadreck Namalomba when he chaired an interaction session with the National Local Government Finance Committee in Lilongwe.

‘We urge the NLGFC to continue this nature of engagement and make certain that they are always are on top of the issues in the local councils as well as making sure that development for councils and constituents is well managed in consultation with councils and especially the legislators’, said Namalomba.

During the interaction session the NLGFC presented papers on the Governance to Enable Service Delivery (GESD), a new council capacity enhancing project slated for roll out in 28 district councils on authorization by parliament.

In the presentation, Coordinator for the GESD Project, Robins Gausi, informed the parliamentarians on the components of the new project, performance based grants, roles of councils and parliamentarians, citizen engagement as well as GESD expectations on efficiencies, audits and balances.

In his ‘efficacy of local governments development funds (CDF & DDF)’, presentation, NLGFC’s Director of Finance Kondwani Santhe provided a holistic case on the related but distinct roles of the two funds.

‘The CDF is a quick response funding mechanism while the DDF is a planned usually major project response fund for development at district level’, said Santhe.

In their contributions members of parliament asked several questions and provided comments and reactions which were responded to by the Executive Director of the NLFGFC Mr. Alifeyo Banda.

Banda thanked the parliamentarians for their commitment and inspiring engagement during the session.

Parliament is scheduled to debate bill 18 of 2020, the GESD authorization bill in the current sitting of the legislature.

The Government of Malawi in Collaboration with the World Bank, GIZ, UNICEF, European Union and International Labour Organisation (ILO) have commenced the implementation of the Urban Cash Transfer in the cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba.

The Urban Cash Transfer programme is being implemented as a COVID-19 response to cushion livelihoods of the urban poor and those depending their livelihoods on vulnerable employment.

National Local Government Finance Committee (NLFGC) Director of Infrastructure and Economic Development, Paul Chipeta said the Urban Cash Transfer in is line with pillar III of the Malawi National Social Support Program (MNSSP) II; “Shock Sensitive Social Protection,” which talks about the expendability and adaptability of Social Support Policies in times of shocks.

“The programme is being implemented to cushion poor urban households from the effects caused by the COVID19 pandemic. It is targeting the urban poor that are in the urban poverty hotspots and the provision of social support, partly ensures some sort of income redistribution thereby cushioning the beneficiaries and their immediate dependents from abject poverty,” said Chipeta.

In addition, the programme also seeks to protect the beneficiaries from engaging in negative coping mechanisms and selling off of productive assets that might come due to loss of an assured source of livelihood.

In total the Urban Social Cash Transfer will reach 186,000 households in the four cities. Chipeta says the World Bank will provide support in Blantyre and Lilongwe to 109,000 households with the remaining households covered by support from the EU and GIZ.

A spot check in Lilongwe at the time of going to print found that enumerators were registering and collecting data of residents in the hotspots identified with the guidance of Ward Committee members.

The collected data for all the targeted households in the hotspots will be assessed for vulnerability in terms of livelihood characteristics/sources, job and food insecurities among other things by the National Technical Team together with City Council Technical Teams.

The Urban Cash Transfer will be implemented for a period of 3 months with a possibility of expansion for a further 6 months.

National Local Government Finance Committee says the implementation of the Enhanced Public Works Programme (EPWP) pilot sub project across 10 councils is going on well.

Director of Infrastructure and Economic Development (DIED) at the NLGFC, Engineer Paul Chipeta says the implementation of EPWP pilot phase has been received with overwhelming support by committees, communities and councils in the ten pilot districts.

“We have eight months to implement pilot EPWP sub projects and then evaluation will follow to determine continuity of public works programme in Malawi. So I am not surprised with the energy, hard work and commitment that communities are putting into the project,” Chipeta said.  

The Director says there is no room for error, failure or complacency.

Currently, EPWP beneficiaries in micro-catchments districts are implementing various climate interventions ranging from tree nursery establishments, digging swales, gully reclamations, stone bands making and construction of water harvesting structures among others.  

Speaking to NLGFC newsletter, District Liaison Officer for Kasungu Kingster Kathumba says the project has indeed started on a high note.

“The spirit of the communities is impressive. We will see communities creating quality assets, like for Chankhanga micro-catchment, beneficiaries have already started constructing swales, nurseries, stone hedge ridging and the progress is very impressive so far,” said Kathumba

The EPWP has taken a holistic approach in conservation of the environment and land resources through Integrated Catchment Management (ICM). EPWP targets ultra-poor households with labour in 10 districts and is premised on the principles of fair and transparent beneficiary selection using the Unified Beneficiary Register (UBR), timely and predictable transfers and creation of quality and sustainable community assets.

The Enhanced public works programme is being implemented in 10 councils (Chitipa, Karonga, Kasungu, Nkhotakota, Lilongwe, Dowa, Balaka, Blantyre, Chiradzulu and Phalombe) with a belief that if the project is successful it will be scaled up to all the district councils in the country.

Machemba Catchment of Traditional Authority Nyezelera in Phalombe recently received 2.2 Million Kwacha cheque to be used towards financing Enhanced Public Works Programme works that are taking place in the area.

The cheque money is expected to carter for procurement of working materials and various tree seeds for reforestation EPWP projects that are set to take place in the area.

Speaking during the cheque's handover ceremony held at Group Village Headman Horo's headquarters, Director of Administration at Phalombe district Council Matthews Mkandawire said Enhanced Public Works Programme projects would enhance new hope for the area.

According to Mkandawire, the district council is aware of environmental challenges in the area that render it vulnerable to natural disasters as such he hoped successful implementation of EPWP would relieve the area.

"This money has come to support the committee in implementing watershed projects that they identified, largely aimed at putting to a complete end problems associated with environmental degradation," Mkandawire said.

Malambwe catchment is currently suffering from serious environmental degradation as evidenced by serious gully erosions happening in most parts of the area, a thing that has been affecting farm production over the past years.

Receiving the cheque chairperson for Machemba Madalitso Daniel expressed enthusiasm in EPWP works, saying the projects under the initiative would hopefully solve many problems in the micro-catchment.

Daniel pledged for the committee to portray financial prudence on the money so as not to disappoint financers and all implementing sections of the Enhanced Public Works Programme.

“We want to be one of the micro-catchments that produce tangible and sustainable results after the eight months of implementation of this project and I assure you that come the end of the pilot phase, Machemba will have delivered the best results,” he added with enthusiasm.

Chairperson for Phalombe district council Francis Nunkhazingwe commended the EPWP facilitated watershed projects that are set to take place in the area, expressing hope that the projects would last.

He further encouraged community members who are not monetary beneficiaries in the EPWP to participate in the works on voluntary basis so as to foster sustainability.

The National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) is facilitating the pilot Enhanced Public Works Programme in 10 district of the country for 9 months.

Story Credit: Sam Majamanda, District Information Officer, Phalombe