November 23, 2015: The Center for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) which is one of the leading organizations that deals with issues of good governance as well as human rights in Malawi, has lobbied the community of Karonga to start advocating for developments from their elected leaders in order to make them fulfilling their promises they made during campaign period.
Speaking to the media after one day training on Monday in the district, CHRR Research and Training Coordinator Michael Kayiyatsa said most of the elected duty bearers are failing to start fulfilling their campaign promises because the community is lack advocating knowledge.
According to Kayiyatsa the problem is affecting developmental projects in their areas since there is no transparency and accountability.
“You know that almost one and half years have passed since the community elected their leaders in May 2014, but unfortunately most of them are yet to start fulfilling their promises that they made during the campaign period,” said Kayiyatsa.
Adding that “one of the reasons for such behavior form our MPs and Councilors is because the community has been dormant in demanding the promised developments from them due to lack of skills on how and where to start robbing their projects, that is why we want to empower them so that they can hold the duty bearers accountable for the pledges they made before the next election season.”
He further said “one thing that the elected leaders forget is that they were elected due to their promises and therefore they must accomplish it.”
One of the 40 participants from Karonga Central Constituency Jarvis Singoko admitted the failure by councilors and MPs in developing their area and described the training as an eye opener to deal with developmental problems in their communities.
“Indeed for many years now these politicians have been just taking us for granted especially during the campaign period because they are fond of promising a lot of things but in the end people in the village still suffer the poverty life because we did not know that we have the right to remind them to fulfill what they promised us,” said Singoko.
“Hence this is a very fruitful training we have ever had because we will make sure that the MPs and Councilors take the responsibility on things they promised using our already existing structures such as the accountability clubs,” he added.
The training is one of the activities under a six month project of improving social services delivery in Karonga with financial support from National Democratic Institute (NDI).
