The local authority in the Chinsali District of Muchinga Province has called on women and youths to form cooperatives in the constituency in order to benefit from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
Chinsali Municipal Council Town Clerk Sombo Kawilila told the Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS) in an interview today that Government has deliberately designed various empowerment programmes for women and youths under the CDF so that they can be empowered.
Ms. Kawilila says women and the young people are key and equal players in national development and empowerment programmes.
“Our desire as a municipality is to at least have a big number of women and youth groups accessing these grants if we want to see development in our constituency,” she said.
And Ms Kawilila added that so far a total of 33 community projects have been identified but are yet to be approved by the ministry.
She added that a sum of K500, 000 has been approved for both 135 Skills bursaries as well as 160 boarding schools bursaries adding that disbursement of the same funds has already started.
“These 135 skills and 160 boarding schools bursaries are both from the first and second quarter CDF while the empowerment project is for the whole year,” she added.
She further called on residents to come on board and form cooperatives and submit their application forms so that they can also benefit from the increased CDF.
“This is people’s money, residents should form cooperatives and apply for this money for them to venture into various businesses that will change their livelihood,” she said.
Ms. Kawilila said government wants to see each Zambian citizen benefit from the national cake and no one should be left behind.
She further commended the Ministry Of Local Government for the timely feedback as it has helped the local municipality to process the applications in good time.
Ms. Kawilila expressed hope to see an increase in the number of residents accessing the CDF.
Still CDF without any result to show.
Stop this cooperatives nonsense… we not in 1970s.
That’s CDF start a farm and employ women only.
Not sewing chitengws like you thinking baswaini.
This is just a smokescreen…it appears there’s no money at all.