Interview

Social Fund of the Republic to serve the Congolese nation

Since its inception, the provincial Social Fund of the Republic which works for improving living conditions of the Congolese population and access to social services through the rehabilitation and reconstruction of economic and social infrastructure, has already completed 24 projects in various sectors across the city of Kinshasa, at a cost of 983,893.42 U.S. dollars, "said its director, Claude Koya, during an interview granted to DCI.
DCI: Can you tell us about your structure?

Claude Koya: The Social Fund is a public institution of a social nature. It aims at participating in DRC’s reconstruction.
It was created by Presidential Decree No. 009/2002 of 5 February 2002, as amended and supplemented by Decree No. 05/063 of 22 July 2005.
In fact, just after taking office, the President had toured all DRC’s provinces and had noted very poor conditions of socio-economic infrastructure. This situation led him to create the Social Fund Institution of the DRC to provide an answer to the problems he had during the tour.

To date, the Social Fund is carrying out since July 2005, the Action Plan for Social Emergency, "pasu", funded by the World Bank for a total of $ 60 million over a 4-year period.

As objective, the project consists of facilitating the access to social services for vulnerable people and improving management of resources devoted to development at grassroots level.

As such, the Social Fund contributes to:
• Improving the living conditions of the Congolese population and access to social services through the rehabilitation and reconstruction of socio-economic infrastructure;
• Creating income and employment in rural and urban areas, by execution or the implantation of micro income-generating projects to alleviate poverty and promote economic and social development.

DCI: Which sectors are taken into account in your jurisdiction and what are your partners?

CK : Our sectors are:
Basic infrastructure:
The pasu supports the implementation of community sub-projects in the following areas:
• Education and training
• Health and Nutrition
• Drinking water and sanitation
• Stocking agricultural products, markets and slaughterhouses
• Rural Transport
• Energy
• Environmental Protection

In carrying out these projects, a contribution of at least 10% is required from beneficiaries. This can be paid in kind or in cash.
The ceiling for financing projects is under $ 50,000 for small size and $ 850,000 for those of average size.

The Social Fund is open to any partnership if this can contribute to achieving its objectives because the work is enormous and it can not alone solve all the problems of communities.
To date, the FSRC works in partnership with the nations Fund for Population in the context of financing sub-projects in the health sector. For a number of health centers to be achieved in each province, the Social Fund is building the building and UNFPA provides necessary equipments.

The Governor of the city supports also supports communities in need by providing the contribution.


DCI. Can we know so far achievements made by sector of intervention for the city of Kinshasa?  


C K. Apart from basic infrastructure projects, the Social Fund is also implementing reading and literacy project "PROLEDA." This project consists of stimulating students in reading.
To achieve this, we are giving mini libraries containing to schools and we’re training teachers of French to manage this school heritage.
For the city of Kinshasa, at least 62 schools have already benefited from these mini libraries. 19 other schools will have it until the end of this year.

Finally, the Social Fund has just implemented the special grant project. These scholarships were awarded to secondary students who have got 65% or more during the State exams, provided they are regularly enrolled in a higher institution recognized in DRC.
This grant encouraged excellence and allowed to buy syllabus and to pay fees.

Unfortunately the budget for this project is exhausted.
The sub-branch has carried out so far 24 projects including:

DCI. What are difficulties encountered in your activities and what are your future prospects?

C K : The biggest task is to make people understand our community approach, i.e. to make beneficiaries of the projects understand that the unique benefit of the Social Fund’s intervention is an asked work.
Finally, another difficulty is the excessive increasing prices of construction materials: cement, wood, sheet metal, gravels.
This makes hard the implementation of ongoing projects.

As far as future prospects, the sub-branch of the Social Fund intends to implement at least 120 projects in the fields of education, drinking water, energy, markets, bridge and health and so on.
To date, we execute sub projects 86 in all districts of the city. And soon, there will be 47 others building sites throughout the city. From this figure, there are two major-scale projects:

• Drilling wells for drinking water and setting up a distribution network in Menkao;
• Modernizing communal market of Matete.

If we can still get funds from local and foreign donors, we can do more because there are projects estimated at more than $ 40 million. This reflects an expression of urgent and pressing needs of communities for which we need to react.

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