Government funds misappropriated

By Elias Mhegera
ALTHOUGH the Government has instituted a series of measures in order for the public to be informed of their expenditures but still many people in the rural setting are unaware of this.

The recent Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) in Coast region by the Community Development for All (CODEFA) NGO, on the distributed subsidies revealed that only a few people are interested to know exactly what has been set aside for them while a good number of the remaining population does not care at all.

In the study ending in May this year that was conducted in four villages of Mzenga ‘A’ Vilabwa, Chakange and Mitengwe all in Kisarawe district, revealed that some villagers do not understand even if they are supposed to question on expenditures in their villages.

The survey discovered that 33 percent of the interviewees did not even understand of the existence of such funds, while 14 percent new of the existence but did not know the exact location of such funds. Moreover 51 percent knew that there were such funds in the district level but did not know the exact amount of such funds.

A handful of people discovered that lack of transparency on expenditures could lead to misappropriation of such funds but they did not know the proper mechanisms to intervene in checking such expenditures. 53 percent admitted that they did not benefit from the existence of these funds.

However the villagers were aware that they are supposed to contribute to the development of their villages. For instance the spraying of cashew trees with fumigants was done for Tsh 600 per tree, while agricultural inputs were bought at Tsh 20,000 for a bag

For that matter villagers did not see if these funds were contributing towards their development because the whole process of allocation of funds and land distribution is not transparent.

This study by CODEFA, had involved all the funds that were supplied to the villages for development projects. Some of these funds were contributed by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF).

Although it is in records that TASAF had distributed over Tsh 12 million for development projects, the only amount which could be accounted on was Tsh 4.09 million while the remaining amount of more than seven million was stolen.

It is argued that the district development director (DDD) and the district extension officer had colluded in the stealing of these funds although villagers’ names remained in the registrations in order to justify the whole process.

It was also revealed by the study that only a handful of the youths do participate in agriculture because they see that agriculture has lost its appeal so these have turned to other commercial activities like firewood and charcoal vending.

The poor motivation in agricultural activities coupled with scarcity of training in modern farming have distracted the youths in agriculture. Although this survey had involved many stakeholders but villagers were not accustomed to the culture of storing any data or information which is a discrepancy.
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