Muchinga MMD member of parliament Howard Kunda has purchased a K1,440,000 worth grader for his constituency using CDF.

And Central Province Permanent Secretary Chanda Kabwe has handed over the machine to the Muchinga District Council for use.

Speaking at the official handover of the machine on Saturday, Kunda, who is also parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairperson, warned those mandated to run the machine not to misuse it as they risked being cited in the Auditor General’s report.

“I would like to take this time to thank the good people of Muchinga constituency for supporting the idea to buy a grader for themselves, which we envisioned since 2014. I would also like to make mention here that coming from the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), I want to urge the people in charge of running and operating this machine to be responsible and account for each service given. If the one’s in charge use the machine for personal use, they will be quoted in the Auditor General’s Report and when you come before us, we won’t spare you,” Kunda warned.

“This machine you are seeing belongs to you. If anyone misuses this machine then they have misused your personal property, thus the need to guard it jealously with a monitoring committee in place. And from now on, we will no longer have to wait for government to send us a grader to do our roads, we shall do it using our own. This will be a relief for government as well, as it supplements its efforts to develop the rural road networks.”

He also appealed to the provincial Permanent Secretary to ensure that farmer inputs are delivered on time so that the area becomes a food hub.

“So we are asking as Muchinga constituency to you, sir, the controlling officer to take keen interest in ensuring that all the queries to start with the [farmer] inputs are delivered on time so that our people can be able to plant on time so that we can have the much-needed food in the district and, indeed, in the country at large and ensure that food security is guaranteed. As a district of agriculture, we would want to mention that with good roads, our people can access any area without any difficulty and with that I am referring to issues surrounding the health sector in our constituency,” said Kunda.

“We would want to see a situation where a hand is given to us [and] the education sector is not forgotten because we know that it starts from education for us to reach where we are and continue on the promise of the people of Muchinga constituency and the people in the district are well-looked after. And we expect that this [grader] will be used as such and whoever would want to work with it would have to come to the Council and pay a little because we have to maintain the machine and also buy fuel and lubricants for it so that it can work fore the people of Muchinga and not a situation where it will just park without the people of Muchinga benefiting from it totally.”

And Chanda congratulated Kunda for utilizing the CDF to better his constituency.