DELAY IN FUND DISBURSEMENT HITS PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Members of the annual general meeting of the Local Government Authorities in Ruvuma Region have requested the Treasury to ensure that it provides funds for implementation of various projects on time because any delays tend to slow down people’s development.

The members made the request during the normal annual meeting held recently in Nyasa District, Ruvuma Region, which was opened by the District Commissioner, Ernest Kahindi, who challenged the members to make good supervision of development projects in their respective areas.

In his opening speech, Kahindi urged the leaders to ensure that the existing projects were implemented in time and ensure that they reflected the value of the money being used on that particular project.

He said that during the period towards the end of the year there were several councils that were yet to complete particular development projects, while for some projects documents showed that full funds had been provided for.

Discussing the speech by the DC, the members said that the main reason for the delay in completion of development projects was the Treasury delaying to disburse funds.

Citing an example, the Songea Municipal Mayor, Charles Mhagama, said so far there were funds allocated for construction of certain roads in the municipality, which were yet to be issued, and that by the time the money is obtained, it will already be in the middle of the long rain season.

He said if money was to be available within the scheduled time, there would be no half completed projects around and at the same time there would be less auditoria queries on them.

Closing the meeting, the chairman of the local government authorities in Ruvuma Region, Oddo Mwisho, called on members to ensure they faithfully implement all the projects in order to avoid causing their councils to receive dirty reports from the Controller and Auditor and General.

Furthermore, he called on members to remind leaders and other stakeholders to conduct meetings so as to evaluate the performance of primary schools in national examinations because the results for last year (2012) were generally poor.