The Parliamentarians welcomes Finance Minister's decision to defer national budget allocation of K9.410 billion for the National Assembly to allow further consultation as the House wants the allocation raised to K12 billion.
As the House began Committee of Supply where the whole House is considering and passing the budget votes for 2016/17, Legislators have argued that K9.4 billion it is not enough to allow the committees of the House to play oversight function on several issues including that Government is promising Malawians.
Zomba Changalume legislator, John Chikalimba argued that if the allocation remain unchanged, all National Assembly Committees will have to meet twice a year yet there is need for Parliamentary Committee's to meet once in every quarter.
However, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe informed the House that the allocation was made as requested by the National Assembly Secretariat.
He further argued that it would be the National Assembly secretariat responsibility to effectively use the allocation particularly prioritising the committees that have to meet more often.
Although Gondwe had earlier said increasing the vote will be a problem due to availability of resources, but with insistence of members to increase the vote allocation, he then deferred the vote and informed the House that he will be consulting the National Assembly secretariat.
At the very beginning the Committee of Supply passed the State Residences vote which has received allocation of K5.316 billion but it took finance minister a lot of time to convince members why Government would like to procure new eight vehicles for the presidential convoy.
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