A Social Audit on Chavuma Police Station

About 607 kilometers west of Solwezi, headquarter district of the North-Western Province, lies Chavuma, the furthest of the nine districts in the province. Chavuma, which is approximately 1,100 kilometers from Lusaka was declared a district in 1996 by the MMD government then led by the late former President Dr. Frederick Chiluba. The district covers 7,347 square kilometers of land and shares an international boundary with Angola in the north-west and a national boundary with Zambezi district to the south-east. The district lies between 914 and 1,218 meters above sea level. Chavuma is divided into two parts by the Zambezi River, with the biggest portion being on the western side, which is sparsely populated with undeveloped and hard-to-reach areas. Much of the area is flooded for almost half of the year, between January and May, while the east bank of the Zambezi River is more developed and highly populated as it hosts most of the government 3 departments. According to the Central Statistical Office 2010 census of population and housing, the district has 37,338 people with one constituency. Chavuma constituency has 13 wards. The Government of Zambia in 2012 engaged Lamuse Construction Company to construct a police station in Chavuma district at a cost of over K1.3 million. The project was supposed to be completed by November 2013 but to date it is still at 80% completion. Additionally, Lamuse Construction Company was overpaid by K 194, 732.75 in circumstances unknown.