Malawi Requires Food Response! President Declare State of National Disaster

 

Problem of hunger in Malawi refusing to die as President Peter Mutharika on Tuesday declared the country, ‘State of National Disaster’, following Agricultural Production Estimates Survey by Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development which has projected that the country will face a maize deficit of more than 1 million Metric Tons (MT). 

The 2015/2016 growing season was marred with erratic rains across most parts of the Southern and Central regions of the country caused by strong El Nino conditions resulting in the drying of crops.

President Peter Mutharika announced on Tuesday that the second round Agricultural Production Estimates Survey done between mid-February and March this year indicates that there is 12.4 percent decline in production as compared to the 2014/2015 final round estimate.

The country’s maize requirement for all uses including human consumption is currently estimated at 3. 2 million MT but this year’s production is around 2. 4 million MT meaning the projected deficit is about 1. 072 million MT. 

This has forced President Peter Mutharika to declare State of National Disaster and appeal for humanitarian relief assistance. 

Mutharika: Asks people to help

“In the circumstances, it is very clear that we have food shortage in the country which will affect a considerable number of our fellow citizens. Accordingly, and in accordance with powers conferred upon me by Section 32(1) of the Disaster Preparedness and Relief Act, I declare a State of National disaster effective from today, 12th April, 2016.” He declared

“I fully appreciate all the previous assistance Malawi has been receiving when affected by disasters, including support for the on-going humanitarian response programme. However, I appeal for humanitarian relief assistance from the International donor community, the relevant United Nations agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations, the private sector as well as all fellow citizens of goodwill, so that, together, we can contribute in alleviating suffering on the part of people who have been affected by the food shortage.”

Mutharika said donations in cash or in-kind should be sent to the Secretary to the Vice President and Commissioner for Disaster Management Affairs, Private Bag 336, Lilongwe 3.

He indicated that Ministry of Agriculture projects that the affected population will require about 790,000 MT of relief food. 

However, he said the Ministry will announce the actual deficit in June after third round production estimates while the actual number of the affected population will be determined by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee in due course.

On part of Government he said there are plans to restock the Strategic Grain Reserve and ADMARC both with a total of 250,000 MT.

But, President Mutharika said, to avert a food crisis in the season requires total maize of 1.3 million MT.

He promised that Government will make sure that all affected people are taken care of and that the remaining part of food items from Government will be distributed to the affected people.

Last growing season of 2014 and 2015 the country also faced with sharp decline in maize production due to floods and erratic rains rendering 2.8 million people in 25 districts food insecure.

PAC Not Contented With Speaker Intervention On Audit Backlog

Alekeni Menyani

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament says will have two more discussion meetings with Parliament Secretariat on the way forward how the Committee will have to handle nine year stacks of audit reports.

This follows another unsatisfactory meeting with the Speaker of the National Assembly on Thursday evening also just the committee had in the morning summoned Clerk of Parliament.

Members of PAC members are outraged by the National Assembly decision to allocate five working days for the Committee to handle the backlog of audit that was done for the past nine years in the district councils.

“These issues are still ongoing.” Confirmed Alekeni Menyani, Chairperson for PAC

He said “Meanwhile we are not satisfied with interventions that is there but it has been opened up and there will be further two meetings during which time we will be able to finalise this issue because the issue of committee work oversight is call and central to the work of the National Assembly”

The committee is concerned that is not practical for the committee to finalise looking at such a pile of reports within a week hence the arrangement to meet with the Speaker to pronounce himself to the prioritization for the work that directly benefits Malawians.

He even did indicate that they are not only ones frustrated with the National Assembly decision saying the Auditor General whose office produce such audits is equally concerned  

“As a committee, our work emanates from the National Audit Office by the Auditor General himself. Auditor General has also expressed himself to the Speaker” disclosed Menyani “He said as Parliamentary Auditor General he is not being given enough resources to work with the committee because he can only finalize his work if he brings reports to the committee”

“Our work is not tailored by ourselves it is tailored by the executive arm of Government and when we asked the executive arm as to why the Committees are not given funds, the executive arm of Government told us clearly that they are giving funds to National Assembly but that the prioritization here at the National Assembly is one that is upside down. 

This is why we summoned Clerk of Parliament on procedure for the prioritization of committee work and the Clerk ably expressed herself on this and also presented to us the strategic plan that is to be used for the prioritization of committee meetings.”

“And so because the figure head of this institution is the Speaker, members made an arrangement also to have him here so that he explains himself to us as to whether what Executive is saying that it is him who is not giving to commitment to committee work and he is the one failing in his duties to prioritise his work.  

Mw Govt. Says Discipline Is Answer To Health Sector Woes

Kumpalume:we are instilling discipline 

Government says instilling discipline in the health sector will help to end current health sector woes.

Minister of Health, Peter Kumpalume said in an interview after listening to the presentation of findings and recommendations from the Parliamentary Health Committee following visits to various districts on quality of health service delivery.

Kumpalume while acknowledging the existence of the problems and issues presented by the Committee, said there is nothing new as the ministry already knows all problems in the sector.

He therefore said the only remedy to put to an end most of the challenges is to brining in discipline in the sector as the Ministry established that the biggest problem is about the attitudes.

“The biggest problem that we face in the health sector is not so much that people are not doing anything. We as the Ministry are addressing those problems” he said 

Then explained; “The biggest problem in the Ministry is not so much say about money, at the end of the day the biggest problem is about the attitudes. 

We have talked about discipline and we have talked about powers concentration at headquarters. But when we had one party state, power was even more concentrated at Capital Hill, and things were working because people knew that there were consequences if they don’t perform and somehow, we have run away from that, and that is kind of discipline that I want to institute in the Ministry of Health”

He said since appointed as head for the ministry, he has successfully instituted discipline especially strong punishments on drug theft as well as for underperformances and that there are indicators that the Ministry is now well disciplined.

“To me by far the biggest problem is the change of attitudes. When the President says let’s have a change of mindset, that is very important because it is only then we can truly transform the health sector.”

He said there are more reforms taking place in the Ministry of Health. Added that there are several achievements including signing of MOU with CHAM, implementation of some of the suggested  areas for health reform, for hospital operations and autonomy have been already been worked on.

Lunguzi

Honorable Juliana Lunguzi, Chairperson for the Parliamentary Health Committee said findings of the Committee following field trips as regards quality of health service delivery established that there are still problems in the health sector.

Unavailability of drugs, lack of enough workers and the need for the autonomy of the central hospitals are among cited problems in the Committee report.

“On equipment and supplies, we found out that in most of our health facilities we get equipment but repairing is a nightmare. We hardly repair our equipment we just dump the equipment, we also don’t have reagents and is an issue that needs to be looked into.” Said Lunguzi

“We are hoping that we will get solutions on how best we can address these issues.” She hoped

The Parliamentary Committee on Health Reform Symposium Agenda, discussed findings of the Health Committee field trips as regards quality of health service delivery, analyzed the Ministry of Health led health reforms and how they address service delivery challenges. 

The meeting also was organized to agree specific actions that need to be covered in the Health Reform process with timeframes and Parliamentary Health Committee oversight.

PAC To Meet Speaker On Audit Backlog After Encounter With Clerk Fail To Yield Results

Menyani 

The Public Accounts Committee of Parliament want to consult Speaker on mapping way forward how the committee will handle audit reports that span a period of nine years.

The Committee intends to request Speaker of the National Assembly to appear before the committee this evening after the committee had in the morning met with Clerk of Parliament over the same issue.

The Clerk was summoned to justify why the committee was allocated with only a week period to scrutinize the audits of nine years from 35 Councils. However, it seems the encounter was not fruitful as the Committee now wants to hear from the Speaker.

“The issue is not whether for us to continue with meetings or not but the issue is as whether they think it is practicable for us to deal with a backlog of nine years in a period of nine years so the Speaker must pronounce himself on this and commit himself to the prioritization of the work that directly benefit Malawians.” said Alekeni Menyani, Chairperson for the Committee

Committee members have demanded to meet the speaker as he is the political head of the institution who has responsibility to prioritize the work that translate directly into the benefit of Malawians.

Speaking of what the committee had discussed with the Clerk, Menyani said; “We were examining whether it is practical that all these things be dealt with in five working days and, the consensus has been reached that that is not practical and we need to find the way forward.”

He explained; “The Auditor General presented to the Clerk of Parliament a backlog of work that spans a period of nine years and has to be dealt with by the Public Accounts Committee. Despite the issues that are spanning the period of nine years, there are also issues of head count in the ministry of Agriculture, health and all those issues”

He said the reason the committee wants ample time to look at the nine year period audits is because they want to finish all the past audits so that they begin to work on the new audits.

He said in 2016 there is no need for the Committee to be looking at old audits and therefore having an ample time to finish old audits will enable them to pursue with recent matters.

“At this point it means that if someone steals money today they will be questioned in nine years time. But that is not good.” said Menyani

PAC Suspects Billions Stolen Between 2008 to 2010 In District Council's

Parliament suspect billions of Kwacha's were stolen between 2008 and 2010 in most Districts, Towns and City Councils as it has discovered that a lot of payment vouchers and supporting documents for some expenditures  are still missing.

Some district councils are appearing before the Committee to respond to audit of 2008 to 2010 with focus on missing payment vouchers highlighted in the audit reports under the period. The committee is following up on unaccounted purchases of fuel, other materials for projects and subsistence allowances among others as there were no supporting documents during the time of auditing.

However, it has been established that although the documents went missing during the material time of auditing, during the appearance to Public Accounts Committee the papers are being brought to auditor general for certification.

Committee has been informed that some of the missing documents have been traced and have now been certified by the Auditor General. The common justifications given to the Committee has been that most documents could not be traced at time of audit due to misplacement. However, still some districts have failed to trace the payment vouchers of which the committee has further demanded the Councils to produce the documents.

Kamlepo

Deputy Chairperson for Public Accounts Committee, Kamlepo Kalua said the missing of vouchers raises eyebrows as this clearly suggests that rampant fraudulent happened during that period and further suggests occurrence of the practice still taking place now.

“What we have discovered is, there are number of loopholes, number of inefficiencies that took place and we could say that was a direct sort of link into looting public resources and most of the accounts that we have seen are in billions.” he said

Having gone through only few districts and seen number of missing documents under the period, Kalua projected that by the end of the week meeting with remaining districts, the total amount of money not accounted for during that period could accumulate into billions of Kwacha's.

“So, we have seen that we have a long way to go” he added

As committee is investigating 2008 to 2010 audits which are old documents though very important exercise, however the process is subjecting new office bearers for the councils to explain things they never done or things that happened before them.

Kalua agrees that this should change and that the Committee should indeed begin to track audits which are very recent.

“We feel this should not be the case now, we should be dealing with the current ones and not the old ones." He said, "Because most DCs are answering to queries that were not party to and are struggling to give information to something they never committed. I hope in future we will be able to improve because this backlog is not doing this country any favour at all. We need to do something current, we need to actually do the 'spot on' kind of investigations so that together we are able to improve the deficiencies as well as incompetencies in all districts, town and city councils.”

He then observed that to enable the committee to investigate recent audits, Government must adequately finance the Auditor General Office so that it does audits in good time and that the Public Accounts Committee must also be supported because it has a very important role of monitoring how public money are being spent.

Mchinji district officials were sent back on Wednesday for failure to account to Millions of Kwachas estimated close to K500 million. During the time of auditing Mchinji failed to produce receipts for the fuel purchase for ambulance, subsistence allowances, among others.

"To have K500 million for 8 years ago is quite alarming to the Committee and calls for number of actions to be undertaken." Reacted Kamlepo during the meeting

"In that respect it is the view of the Committee we cannot continue with our sessions with you. The Committee regretably sends you back till we meet st a set date " He ruled 

The Committee demanded the representatives to bring in the future meeting, a former controlling officer, former sector head of health and the person who was handling the finances at that time.

Ntcheu district officials were also sent back for appearing before the Committee without controlling officers (District Commissioners) who were running the office during the audited period as it was observed that it could have been a waste of time to ask incumbent officers to go into details of things that happened before them.

Nkhotakota DC Urge Parliamentarians To Lobby For More Funding For District Councils

Mkandawire

District Commissioner (DC) for Nkhotakota district has asked the legislatures to lobby for more funding for the district councils to enable them have enough resources for development activities.

Felix Mkandawire, DC for Nkhotakota made the plea during appearance before Public Accounts Committee of Parliament on Wednesday where he was responding to 2008 to 2010 financial audits for Dowa District, time he was District Commissioner for the district.

Mkandawire said budget allocation challenges facing councils are not strange among legislatures and therefore they must work together in lobbying for timely and adequate funding.

“We stay together with Members of Parliament who are also members of the District Council, and we see the problems that people faces every day, so, we need to address the needs for development and service delivery” he clarified in an interview

"Since we stay together in the district Councils, we should lobby together that more of the resources are developed from the centre so that the decentralization and devolution that we are talking about as a country should be realistic and should really be felt at district level." He said 

He bemoaned that councils continue to receive inadequate funding yet they are expected to provide various services and implement development projects for the people. He noted that the funding they get in councils is mainly for the Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT).

“It makes sense that most of the money that is allocated in the national budget should go direct to the district councils because we are closest to the people.” he emphasised 

He then proposed change for current set up where councils waits for the funds to come from the Capital Hill. He opted for the empowerment of councils whereby they are given powers to manage funds allocated in the national budget

“The devolution and decentralization will only be appreciated by the masses if they lead to improvement in service delivery and this can only be delivered by the councils if the majority of resources are decentralized to the district councils.”

UN Urges Malawi To End Mob Killings

The United Nations (UN) has asked Malawi Government to put to an end of the ever increasing mob killings happening across the country.

Malawians have resorted to take law into their hands through a gruesome approach where suspected criminals are either being condemned by stoning to death or set on fire.

Since early this year, at least nine separate incidents leading to the death of 16 people have been reported and the problem seem to be worse in the Central and Southern regions of the country.

In a statement dated April 5th, 2016, Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Cécile Pouilly said UN is concerned about the increasing number of people killed in mob attacks and has asked the country to make efforts to end these cases.

"We urge the authorities in Malawi to act promptly to identify and prosecute those involved in mob killings, and to offer remedy to victims." Pouilly said in the statement

"We also urge the authorities to address the root causes of such attacks and to launch an awareness campaign to encourage people to report crimes to police rather than take justice into their own hands." Adds the plea

However the UN has since welcomed President Arthur Peter Mutharika's 30 March statement that strongly condemning these crimes. Mutharika called on all citizens, NGOs and Government agencies to support the Malawi police in its fight against mob killings in accordance with the rule of law.

It is reported that On 28 March, a mob stormed a police station, taking a man accused of murder out of his cell and killing him in Dedza, and that seven people accused of possessing human bones were attacked and set on fire by a mob on 1 March in the district of Nsanje.

On 25 January, four elderly members of the same family were also beaten and killed by a mob in Neno District, after being accused of using witchcraft to kill a 17-year-old woman by lightning. In a separate incident, on 3 February, residents of a township in Blantyre, set fire to a Court, apparently out of fear that it would grant bail to three men suspected of murder.