The process of trimming the number of officers in the country’s 23 foreign missions has resulted in the recall of 95 diplomats and retrenchment of 123 local staff in the missions.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has reported that about K1.2 billion has been used to pay the retrenched local staff in 20 embassies and three consulates.
Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dalitso Kabambe, said government has finalised the process and some of the recalled diplomats are those that had stayed in the missions for over 13 years against the 36-month period provision.
Kabambe said over half of the recalled diplomats are those that were hired from the private sector and have parted ways with government after the expiry of their contracts while diplomats who originated from various government departments have been assigned other duties.
The contracts for some five or six diplomats also expired but they told the ministry that there are some personal issues they needed to finalise before their moving back to Malawi and what government has done is to delete them from payroll.
“They no longer receive anything from us as we stopped paying them the foreign services allowances. We stopped paying the rentals and school fees for their children. It was not easy to uproot people to come back home.
“Some were resisting our recall and they fought very hard not to come. About three took us to court but all cases were won,” Kabambe said.
He told Parliamentary Committee on International Affairs yesterday that the exercise has seen the ministry reducing its monthly wage bill from about K1.3 billion to slightly over K500 million.
Before the exercise, according to Kabambe, most missions had 18 or more diplomats.
“It is only London [United Kingdom] where we still have eight diplomats but two of those diplomats have finished their tour of duty and there are some issues that they are finalising. By the end of the year, they will be in the country,” Kabambe said.
According to Kabambe, at one time, some missions such as Zimbabwe’s Harare had 29 local staff and some of such people were receiving salaries as huge as $5,000, $6,000 or worse still $ 7,000 which had a huge negative impact on the wage bill.
He said the aim was to have six diplomats and about six local staff in each of the missions.
“Of course, where we have few diplomats, for example three or four, there is still need for us to fill the gaps,” he said.
Responding to question on children, friends, relatives of politicians and influential figures that are in missions, Kabambe said the ministry is in the process of replacing non-professionals with professionals.
“There are others who were already misplaced and we are just waiting for the end of their tour of duty to replace them,” he said.
Chairperson for the Parliamentary Committee on International Affairs, Alex Meja, said although the ministry is doing better in terms of reducing the costs and improving the bilateral agreements, it is falling short in terms of trade and investments.
“We are getting less from some embassies in terms of trade and attraction of foreign investors,” Meja said.
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