CLAIMS BUDALANGI CDF MONEY NAMWAMBA'S TO USE ANY WHICH WAY

It is now alleged that constituency development fund allocated to Budalangi constituency in the 2011/12 financial year was diverted and used during the 2013 campaigns.

According to investigations, since the revelations of the alleged misuse of the CDF funds in the constituency weeks ago, MP Ababu Namwamba ordered the fund’s committee to allocate huge sums of the fund into projects he was interested into thus the committee channeled tens of millions in accounts that are operated by firms registered in the names of close friends and relatives of the MP.

It is claimed that a project which was being undertaken by one of Namwamba’s allies and many of which had hidden contractors in the Budalangi CDF circles has been used to siphon funds meant for CDF and were in particular allocated about half of all the amount the CDF fund receives in a year to carry out classrooms and an administration blocks and purchasing of a college bus.

The Victoria Institute of Technology also known as Bunyala Institute of Technology, received funding as if the two were two different entities, thus confusing many who would raise queries about the funding of the amount allocated to the institute.

What is shocking is that even after the allocation of the said millions, nothing substantial has been undertaken by the said contractor who was to have been paid to construct two lecture halls and an administration block at the college, the institute still lies in shambles with only the old structure standing on the eight and a half acres of land even after funds were allocated to purchase 20 acres of land for the institute.

A college bus which was also catered for in the funds allocation in the said financial year and which was supposed to have been bought by one of Namwamba allies’ firms, has since not been purchased and there are questions being asked by many as to how the CDF reached at the resolution of purchasing the college bus way before the completion of the college facility to cater for the would-be learners.

It is at this point that it was pieced together and finally understood that the funds allocated to the institute and many other ghost projects in Budalangi including the purported Port Victoria street lighting project were actually a ploy to hoodwink the public and auditors. The funds were allegedly channeled into the MP’s campaign coffers in a diversion well planned with the help of the CDF manager who until the recent raid by anti-graft officers who were called in by the public after an outcry by the constituents, was one of the richest CDF managers in the country.

The blunder by the funds headquarters releasing the funds to constituencies during campaign moment too, was to blame for the funds misapplication for many MPs might have done what the Budalangi MP did with the funds meant for development in his area.

It is alleged that  projects that only exist on paper and not found anywhere in  Budalangi constituency must have been an earlier cash siphoning plan by the area MP into his many accounts one which is alleged to be in the names of the MP’s mother in her 70s, holding tens of millions of shillings with no particular source of the monies in her name. It is due to this misappropriation of the CDF that the poor parents in Budalangi have failed to secure secondary school and college entry for their children who excelled as there are no structures put in place to help such needy parents and their equally needy children.

In other constituencies, by the time exam results are announced, the CDF committees would have allocated at least Sh40,000 per each candidate who pass their exams to be used as their start-up to their next level, a thing that has helped many but which has never been experienced in the constituency.