MANSA Central PF member of parliament Chitalu Chilufya says the increased Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is an opportunity to enhance decentralisation and take development to the people.
Dr Chilufya adds that this also strengthens and empowers local people to participate directly in development.
The government increased the CDF allocation in the national budget from K4.6 billion in 2024 to K5.6 billion in 2025, further translating into a rise from K30.6 million to K 36.1 per constituency. 
“I must state from the onset that the increment is a positive step towards decentralisation, a positive step towards the empowerment programmes at local level,” Dr Chilufya said in a statement.
He said when he went to parliament in 2013, members of parliament embarked on a robust development agenda where they identified five development pillars, including education.
Dr Chilufya said with the education pillar, it was agreed that all eligible children needed to be in class or college.
“The second pillar was health, ensuring that health services were available for everyone to access. The third pillar was agriculture, ensuring that our people had better access to improved feeder roads to their farms and also that they had the ability to increase their output, having more inputs. And furthermore, we wanted to have increased number of deports where they would sell their produce. We also wanted to ensure that generally there was more participation in farming by our citizens,” he said. “Fourthly, on infrastructure we were targeting the roads, markets and indeed any other infrastructure that we can improve development in our constituency. And fifthly, empowerment of our youths, our women and the rest of the population. So, we have been on course and from 2013, we have scored progress.”
Dr Chilufya observed that what had happened in the last three years of UPND’s administration has seen acceleration towards meeting the set targets owing to the increased CDF.
He said Mansa Central Constituency only had three secondary schools in 2013, but now has 21.
“Our children used to crowd at a makeshift primary school but now they can walk to a near secondary school. The biggest impact increased CDF has had in Mansa Constituency in the markets is the completion of Lukangaba Market. We are now paving outside the market and we now have roller shutters for the market. That is a very big improvement towards how people are doing their marketing in the constituency,” Dr Chilufya said.
Dr Chilufya also said a number of people in the constituency have been supported in agriculture through cooperatives.
He however noted that having a uniform CDF figure has proved to be a challenge, insisting that rural and urban constituencies cannot have the same allocation owing to differences in their geographical access.
“Overall, I am saying that CDF is a high impact investment in our people and increasing it is moving toward the full decentralization … we have had challenges in roads in Mansa but we have just procured earth-moving equipment and we are grading our roads and opening up new areas. We have a few roads already graded and we just need to increase on a few. I end by saying increasing CDF is a step in the right direction,” said Dr Chilufya.
