Malawi News Agency, Lilongwe – Kasungu — The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) under the Lilongwe Archdiocese has said that it is fighting hard to making sure that local assemblies are responsive to the needs of its citizens.
Through the two year K141 million Tilitonse funded project called “Enhancing citizen participation for accountable and responsive governance,” 12 districts are to benefit through advocacy on land disputes, including their rights and responsibilities on different development activities done at local assembly level.
In the central region, under the Lilongwe Archdiocese, CCJP is working in three districts of Mchinji, Ntchisi and Kasungu with each district having two Traditional Authorities (T/A’s) benefiting from the project.
In KU, T/A Kaluluma and Mwase are to walk the talk from the life changing project
Speaking during the District Executive Committee (DEC) meeting at the District Commissioner’s chamber on Tuesday when launching the second phase of the project, Patrick Chima, CCJP Lilongwe Programmes Manager emphasized on the need of an informed community on all issues affecting their daily lives.
“After seeing that there is lack of participation of citizens on local government issues, our organization in collaboration with other Non-Governmental Organizations thought it wise to go into the communities to mobilize them to take an active role in development issues,” he said.
Some of the organizations partnering with CCJP in this project are; Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM), Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC), National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) and Circle for Community Development (CICOD)
The programs manager also highlighted in an interview with Mana that for their goals to be achieved easily, it has established a district multi-stakeholders committee which would take a greater role in empowering the communities through Area Development Committees (ADC) and Village Development Committees to generate issues affecting them.
And in his remarks, Chairman of the KU District Multi-stakeholder Committee Gerald Chirwa who is also District Civic Education Officer of NICE hailed CCJP for the great role it is playing in changing people’s lives in the first phase of the project between 2010 till 2012.
“if we can trace the successes of the project under phase one, the country’s constitution was translated into different languages, a lot of issues affecting people’s lives were generated and handled accordingly.
“Moreover, the community is now well informed on the local assembly administration. And we have hope that the forthcoming second phase of the project would go miles further in bringing change in people’s lives,” he said.
The project will run from 2014 to September 2015 and each district has been allocated almost K11 million for the smooth running of the program.
