It is not only raining but pouring for the Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) as sheriffs on Friday impounded yet another set of property belonging to the electoral body due to non-payment of accumulative service providers’ debts.
According to Judiciary spokesperson, Mlenga Mvula, the sheriffs went to the electoral body’s headquarters at Chisankho House in Blantyre where they impounded computers and refrigerators just three days after taking away three vehicles in similar fashion.
In fact, Malawi Electoral Commission, if you talk to them, they will tell you that they have several outstanding debts with different service providers and for more on that you can find out from them. But for us, we are just executing the order which the High Court granted,” Mvula said.
In an interview yesterday, Mec spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said he did not have details of the case that resulted into Friday’s sheriff action.
But Mwafulirwa repeated what he said just after the sheriffs had impounded the vehicles on Tuesday that there are a number of outstanding debts mostly emanating from 2014 elections.
He, however, said Mec is engaging the government on how to clear the debts.
On Tuesday, the sheriffs impounded two ten-tonne van vehicles and a Toyota Hiace minibus over the commission’s failure to pay debts totaling to over K90 million to three companies namely Universal Trading Company, Platinum Solutions and Transworld Radio.
The debts come on the backdrop of the last year’s audit report from the Central Internal Audit Unit of the Ministry of Finance which revealed abuse of funds at the electoral body.
The report forced the commission to make public the documents and records that constitute its responses to the audit.
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