One Cabinet minister in President Peter Mutharika’s 20-member Cabinet and 40 Members of Parliament (MPs) risk losing their ministerial position and parliamentary seats, respectively, for failing to submit annual assets declarations in the year ending June 30 2017.
The report that the office of the Director of Public Officers’ Declarations submitted to the Parliamentary Monitoring Committee in Salima on Saturday also shows that assets that 10 public officers declared are mismatching with physically verified assets, raising suspicions of dishonesty in the process.
Director of Public Officers’ Declarations, Chris Tukula, told the committee that officers in the political category— including members of the Cabinet, MPs and councillors— are performing well in declarations, compared to officers in other categories.
He, however, said the defaulting Cabinet member and lawmakers are slippery.
The law stipulates that defaulting officers are supposed to be dismissed from public service if they are civil servants and, for those that become officers by virtue of holding a political office, their seats are supposed to be declared vacant.
“So far, we have one member of Cabinet who has not submitted his or her annual declarations. From Parliament, currently, we have 40 Members of Parliament that have not submitted their annual updates for the last financial year. We are, therefore, seeking the recommendation of the [monitoring] committee to take these people to task in compliance with what the law says,” Tukula said.
He could not disclose the names of the defaulting minister and lawmakers.
But the contents of the report, including the names of the defaulters, will be made public after the Monitoring Committee’s input and recommendations and subsequent publication in the Gazette.
On the officers whose declared assets that are mismatching the assets on the ground, the assets director said the assets directorate is inviting the concerned officers to explain the basis for such a misrepresentation of their own assets.
“Should we, indeed, ascertain that the basis of this misrepresentation was dishonesty, the law will have to take its course, which is making a recommendation that they be prosecuted and, if found guilty, they can be convicted up to a maximum of two years,” he said.
Out of over 12,000 declarations, the assets directorate had a sample of 200 declarations for the initial physical verification, representing one percent of all declarations against the international standard of two percent, a development attributed to resource-constraints.
MP for Lilongwe Mpenu-Nkhoma, Collins Kajawa, who chaired the meeting, said the Monitoring Committee would have to decide on the defaulters and the weaknesses that have been identified in the assets declaration law.
“In the next two months, the committee should be taking a position on what has transpired,” Kajawa said.
The report also cites State Residences, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi, Malawi Human Rights Commission, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, technical colleges, National Council for Higher Education and Pesticides Control Board as low annual compliance institutions.
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