Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the country have expressed concern over the government’s decision to amend the NGO Act of 2000 without seeking their views.
Some NGOs feel that some of the clauses in the bill seek to prevent or stifle the operations of the civil society in the country.
Incidentally, the formulation of the bill is coming at a time the same government has not concluded the process of seeking NGOs input into the NGO policy which is based on the same Act government wants amended.
The draft bill—which we have seen—among others, replaces ‘Board’ in the name with ‘Authority’ and it shall consist of nine members who shall be appointed by the responsible minister.
According to the draft bill, the Principal Act has been amended in Section 9 by deleting the words ‘in consultation with Council for Non-Governmental Organisations (Congoma) in Malawi’.
“The Authority shall withhold, suspend or cancel registrations of NGOs in the event of failure or refusal to comply with the provisions of the Act,” reads the replacement of Section 18 Subsection 2 of the Act.
Commenting on the development, the National Advocacy Platform (NAP) has described the formulation of the bill as a governance breach.
NAP Chairperson Benedicto Kondowe has said if the government has indeed formulated the Act, it raises questions about when the law was formulated.
“I think the process that the government had undertaken is not adding up, because we had been made to understand that the NGO Policy was subject to review by the NGO community and as we were in this process, we are hearing that the government had already amended the Act. This raises serious questions,” he said.
He further said the formulation of the draft bill indicates challenges of proper governing.
“One would conclude that the development of the policy was cosmetic because they had already proceeded to draft the bill. Our view is that the policy development process should have been concluded before the government embarked on drafting the Bill. It could be that the issues that stakeholders are raising of the policy might not have been addressed in the bill,” he said.
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare officials were not immediately available for comment.
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