The National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council (NAC) and the Local Government Service Commission (LGSC) have led the way in the Government’s decentralization process by successfully integrating District AIDS Coordination Advisors (DACAs) into local authorities on a permanent and pensionable basis, doing away with the programme mode of employment under NAC.
The LGSC assisted by NAC has recruited 116 DACAs on behalf of all the existing districts throughout the country to enable local authorities effectively deal with the epidemic as a developmental challenge.
This is in response to a directive by President Edgar Lungu in 2015 to local authorities to take up the responsibility of employing a cadre of professionals within their structures whose mandate would be provision of technical expertise on HIV and AIDS response.
LGSC Chairperson Mr Amos Musonda told the Southern zone recruits on 3rd September 2018 in Lusaka during their orientation into local authority work that they had been recruited under an atmosphere of stiff competition from a short list of 623 applicants.
Mr Musonda told the DACAs from Lusaka, Eastern, Western, Central and Southern Provinces at MICA Convention Centre that they were joining a team of highly qualified staff in local authorities hitherto known to employ lowly qualified personnel.
“The Commission has embarked on a transformation agenda to ensure that local authorities have well qualified, professionally competent and skilled workforce capable of rendering efficient and effective services to citizens. The transformation agenda will also remove the tag and perception that local authorities are full of incompetent and ill-qualified staff,” Mr Musonda said.
He told the new recruits to always adhere and uphold the public service’s core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity, impartiality, loyalty, respect, accountability, excellence, confidentiality and selflessness.
Local authorities exist for the sole purpose of providing socio-economic services at the local level. With the issuance of Cabinet Circular No. 10 of 2014, the HIV Coordination function at local level was devolved into the local government functions and services and hence the transfer into council structures of DACAs who have been employed as HIV, Gender and Human Rights Mainstreaming Planners.
And NAC Acting Director General Mr Fortune Chibamba told the DACAs that their recruitment arises from the need to provide a cadre of leaders to champion HIV and AIDS response; and to stimulate ownership, decision making, accountability and sustainability in the HIV and AIDS response at community level.
He said it was the policy of the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) and a fundamental requirement under the Constitution of Zambia to decentralise key functions and responsibilities to the local authorities in order to encourage community participation in decision making.
The first group of DACAs to be oriented in their new positions was from the Northern zone of the country covering Copperbelt, Luapula, Northern, Muchinga and North Western Provinces.
Compiled by the NAC Communications Unit
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