Enhancing Community empowerment to achieve Duty Holder Accountability and Responsiveness in Mweniwisi VDC

Updated on June 8, 2024
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Mwenewisi is Located in the North of Karonga District under T/A Kilupula. The success story is basically illustrating the strides that Karonga NICE has made in trying to transform people in the target community. Both the duty bearers and the right holders have benefited from the interventions. The story clearly shows the stages of information, empowerment and transformation. The sustainability of the transformation is guaranteed as the interventions are not driven by external forces but rather the community members themselves.

Duration of the Process: from march 2016 to March 2018

1. Problem Analysis:

The district suffered severe corruption at all levels which has paralysed the implementation of development projects. Despite heavy resources being supplied to the district to help alleviate the poverty status of the citizens, the corrupt duty bearers misappropriated the resources and swindled the money for their own personal benefits rendering the community poorer. The malpractice remained unchecked for so long that it got institutionalised. It became part of daily life and more of an accepted way of living to divert public resources for personal gains. The citizens or otherwise right holders who were the victims of the rampant corruption were helpless and had resigned to fate.

2. Intervention Process:

In March 2016, Karonga NICE embarked on capacity building of the volunteers on accountability among which were the volunteers from Mwenewisi. The volunteers were introduced to concept of citizen forum. Case stories about Mlare Citizen Forum and Zindi Citizen forum were presented to motivate the volunteers and allow them appreciate the difference that citizen forums can bring in communities.

After the capacity building workshop, the volunteers in T/A Kilupula mobilised people in the community to take part in ending corruption which followed the establishment of a citizen forum under GVH Mwenewisi.

Capacity building through training sessions were provided to the citizen forum which was established during the sensitization meetings. The training focussed on Social Accountability and budget tracking.

A budget tracking exercise was carried out in May 2016 on LDF implementation. The tracking exercise unveiled heavy abuse of resources by the local level duty bearers. The team established that, of the planed and budgeted 150 people to work on Mateyo – kalambo road, afforestation at kalambo and Pitala – Mwenewisi road, 80 were employed and that 70 were ghost workers whose wages were pocketed by the local level duty bearers who were; the GVH, the VDC chairperson, some extension workers and 10 other village headmen. A total of 14 local level duty bearers were involved in the creation of ghost workers.

The Citizen forum was provided with 2 bicycles to ease its mobility since its area of jurisdiction is big and difficult to walk and provide rapid response to corruption issues

Several other activities took place which are highlighted under achievements

Achievements:

The interventions achieved among others; (i) Redeeming the stolen LDF money and redistributed to the intended development project. (ii) Completion of a community day secondary school which stalled due to corruption. (iii)Facilitated the opening of the community day secondary school. (iv) Provision of water facilities to the school resulting from the opening of the school.

The ghost workers were evidenced during payment of the wages for those working on the road. When the citizen forum observed that a total of wages meant for 70 people had been pocketed by a few duty bearers, they mobilised the citizens to act. The citizens through citizen forum arrested all the duty bearers who were involved in the swindling of MASAF 4 funds for their area. The culprits were in Police custody for about 2 days and the community made two demands (i) The culprits to give back the money each one according to what he/she pocketed. (ii) Pay a penalty of MK50,000 to the community which would be used for self-help development projects within the community. All the fourteen involved in the malpractice gave back the money and a penalty of MK50,000 including the GVH. Since then, the community leadership and the citizens do not entertain corrupt practices in this area.

In November, 2016 the citizen forum intervened in a stalled construction project due to corruption. the community responded to the issue of long distances for secondary school going students and initiated a self-help Community Day secondary school and teachers’ houses construction project at Wilole. The construction process commenced prior to establishment of citizen forum and it stalled because duty bearers were squandering money that people were contributing towards the project. Because the project stalled, community members started stealing already bought and stored construction materials such as cement and planks. The general populace in this community gave up and stopped contributing towards the project until citizen forum was established.

The citizen forum, after handling the MASAF 4 funds issue commenced an expenditure tracking exercise for Wilole Community Day Secondary School. This time around with the support of the local leadership all culprits were apprehended and made to refund the abused resources as well as paying a penalty fee of MK50,000.

The community changed the leadership of the school Management Committee and the Village Development Committee which facilitated the completion of the school construction project July, 2017.

The community leaders reported the completion of the secondary school construction project to the District Education Manager who made promises to allocate teachers and select students to the school which never happened.

People were demoralised when the 2017/18 secondary school selection did not allocate any student to Wilole Community Day Secondary School. When the community representative visited the Education Office to find out, they were told to wait for second selection. Again it did not materialise. Students both boys and girls kept suffering long distances to attend secondary school education.

The ACEC of the area shared the development with the Karonga NICE. NICE Karonga organised a media tour comprising of; MBC radio and TV, Daily times and Nation newspapers to the site.

Two weeks after the features in the newspapers and TV news on the school and the delays in opening it, the school was assigned two teachers, male and female, students were selected from other schools to Wilole CDSS. Teaching and learning commenced in January, 2018

To make the environment conducive for teachers and students the government provided water to the school immediately the teachers reported for work at the school.

In March 2017, the Citizen Forum conducted a budget tracking exercise on the road rehabilitation project implementation implemented by the National Roads Authority. The information on the bill post indicated that the rehabilitation of the road would start from Kibwe – Kalambo -Mwenewisi via mwenetete – Mwakaboko but the actual rehabilitation work was done on Kibwe – Mwenewisi road and from the Court to Camp.

When these Accountability structure leaders observed that what was indicated on the post was not actually what was on the ground, they initiated a process to seek dialogue with the responsible duty bearers. The team started by asking their Member of Parliament to clarify why the depart from the indicated route which the MP confessed ignorance of and only promised to follow up on the issue.

In June 2017, the team demanded explanation from those working on the road as to why they were not doing their job according to what is indicated on the post. The workers’ responses were not satisfactory and they resorted to seeking dialogue with the contractor whose contact details they obtained from the post. They demanded explanation from the contractor who after several arguments agreed to interface with the community on the issue.

In July, 2017, community members reported to the accountability a corruption issue by the leaders of the civil protection committee. The leaders of Village Civil Protection Committee demanded a bribe from an old woman for facilitating the identification and construction of houses for the vulnerable people in which she was among the beneficiaries.. The leaders argued that if it were not for them, the old woman would not have accessed the help and instructed the old lady to give them two bags of cement in return. The issue was brought to the attention of the Group Village headman. The GVH in collaboration with the community told the two to give back the bags of cement to the old lady and were tasked to pay the traditional penalty fee of MK50,000 which they complied.

During a discussion session with the GVH he indicated that the experience he had gone through had moulded him to become an advocate of accountability as he said “I will not allow any body in my area of jurisdiction to abuse public resources let alone our own contributions. Anybody involved in such malpractices will be charged a penalty of MK50,000. I was made to pay such an amount for participating in abusing public funds and everyone doing similar malpractices will have to pay the same amount! He charged.

The community keeps on enjoying a corrupt free environment as a result of the transformational process which NICE facilitated. There are other communities in Karonga that are doing similar interventions such as Mlare and Lupaso under the support of Karonga NICE office. In an effort to motivate the community, NICE in Karonga supported the Mwenewisi Citizen Forum with two bicycles as one way of resolving the mobility challenges.

The knowledge and skills that NICE has been providing is being used to sustain the fight against corruption.

Problems addressed

The interventions have basically changed the governance landscape of the community. People in this community are living with eyebrows up and they easily detect corrupt practices and the culprits are charged with the usual stiff penalty. Generally, there are reduced cases of corruption in this community as they move towards meeting their vision of having a corrupt free community.

Students, more especially girls are no longer walking long distances to access secondary school education.

Contribution to the NICE outcomes

The intervention took participants through the process of information dissemination, empowerment and transformation.

The interventions brought about proactive communities that are geared towards completely ending corruption in their community thereby contributing to the attainment of good governance.

People in this community are empowered enough to demand their right to development from respective duty bearers and the duty bearers are made to account for their performance.

Challenges:

Most duty bearers were resisting change. The duty bearers fought the change agents. Members of the accountability forum where threatened by both local duty bearers and those from T/A or/ and ADC level. They were instructed to drop the charges because it affected traditional leaders who according to them did not have to be exposed as being corrupt.

This community had been active politically since 2015. It had two major opponents; the then MP and the aspiring candidate. The secondary school project turned into a battle ground for the two politicians. The then MP wanted the project to speed up so that he could use it during his 2019 election campaign while the aspiring MP was mobilising his supporters to drag it so that it should be completed after 2019 elections.

It was therefore very difficult for the local leaders and the project implementation committee to mobilise resources from the community.

In addition, those that did not want the project to finish on time were stealing construction materials. Criminals were caught and sent to police to be apprehended.

Crucial elements for success

Community empowerment process was systematic

The Citizen Forum was not imposed on the community. There was awareness raising on accountability. The effects of corruption in community in question made the people to develop an attitude to fight corruption which led to opting for an accountability structures

Right training package for the accountability structure

The citizen forum was practically trained in Social Accountability and budget tracking which equipped them with relevant skills to influence accountability.

Critical stakeholders were involved at the right stage of the process

Police, the District Council Secretariat, media, Traditional leaders were involved at a time where their participation made an impact.

Consistency in handling corrupt practices

All corrupt cases were treated with the same penalty. It has therefore been inculcated in the lives of people in this community that corruption on public resources will bring them more trouble. Everyone understood that corruption is not accepted, condoned or tolerated in the community.