Ignorance retards development, says GVH Matope

Enumerating settlements before implementing developmental projects is vital because a surveyed population is better placed to demand people-oriented projects, a village leader has said.

Group Village Headman (GVH) Matope of Ndirande said this on the backdrop of Slum Dwellers International 7 Cities Project being implemented in Blantyre courtesy of Federation and CCODE.

He said the project was an eye opener recounting that previously his subjects hardly catalogued prevailing problems. He said in the absence of such information, it was difficult to demand community-oriented projects.

“For years, we thought we could see but we were too blind to notice our own problems. I am saying this because as a settlement we did not know our population. We did not know that many households had no toilets and that we only have one broken private water kiosk saving 1,836 households,” said Matope

“We only knew that diarrhoeal diseases were rife in this settlement but we never figured out a reason for that. However, this has all come out because of the enumeration, profiling and the mapping that we have done with support from CCODE and the Federation.”

The village head said it was impressive that the project equipped his area with profiles and plans saying the data remained a benchmark during discussions between the Council and communities.

He recalled a moment when leaders of informal settlements attended Participatory Budgeting Session at the City Council for the first time saying it enabled them to learn what was happening in the City.

The GVH said he was surprised when a Constituency Development Funds (CDF) expenditure report revealed that his constituency gets MK7 million for small development projects saying he wondered where that money goes.

“I was shocked to discover that our MPs are not spending this money for their own reasons. We always thought that there was no money for development projects but we now know that the money is there,” said Matope.

‘Now that we know, there is this money to fund projects like those we have identified through the enumeration, profiling and mapping exercises. The information we have will give us power to push our representatives to do more for us.”