Over a month after Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) disconnected electricity at the government building in Blantyre, departments that operate in the building have stopped providing critical services denying the government revenue from services in the Southern Region.
Escom is refusing to reconnect the building after government failed to settle an K800,000 bill of the initial K1.6 million.
Ironically, the Department of Lands alone makes an average of K10 million per month in service fees but the power cut has reduced the monthly revenue to less than K20,000.
Only the Immigration Department is operating normally as it has a separate pre-paid electricity meter.
On June 24 this year, the power utility body disconnected the building due to unpaid bills.
The offices that are feeling the pinch include the Administrator General’s Department, Department of Information, Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), Trade, Legal Aid Bureau, Blantyre District Council, Lands and Housing, Fiscal Police, Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services and the Judiciary.
Others are Department of Tourism, Gender, Children and Social Welfare.
The offices have stopped serving the public in crucial areas such as land registration and certification, deceased estates management and judicial services.
Legal Aid Bureau fulfills the governments constitutional obligations of ensuring every person’s right to justice and legal remedies and several vulnerable groups rely on it in accessing justice. On the other hand, government has been touting tourism to be a major forex earner for the country.
Chief Secretary to the Government, George Mkondiwa, cabinet minister and principal secretaries use this building every time they are in Blantyre.
Commercial banks that provide their services in the building are issuing manual receipts, raising fears that government may lose some cash through human error.
Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development spokesperson, Charles Vintulla, yesterday attributed the delays in settling the bill to delays in receiving Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT) funding among some departments.
Each of the departments that are housed in the building contributes towards the settling of monthly bills.
“This bill is from the last financial year and with the fiscal year transition ORT funding for some departments has been delayed which has created coordination problems in the process of ensuring that the bill is settled.
“We are equally concerned that without electricity, offices in that building are really struggling. But we are doing everything to ensure that the bill is settled. We also have plans to strengthen coordination between departments in that building for timely settling of the bills,” Vintula said.
Former Blantyre District Council chairperson, Thomas Kaumba, told The Daily Times, immediately after the disconnection, that there are some offices that pay their share of the bill in time while others take time to settle their dues.
“For the District Commissioner’s office to release funds for some projects, they need to operate in an environment that has electricity to use the computers but with the disconnection, all that has stopped,” Kaumba said.
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