The Decent and Affordable Housing Subsidy Programme commonly called Malata and Cement Subsidy is still facing challenges with the latest development that the responsible ministry has only received and used K5.8 billion in two years instead of the approved K14 billion.<\/p>\n
The National Assembly approved K7 billion in the National Budget for each year since 2014 but the programme has never received the entire approved funds.<\/p>\n
The programme has only managed to upgrade and construct 8000 houses instead of the targeted 15,440 according the reports at the ministry.<\/p>\n
Chief Housing Officer in Ministry Lands Housing and Urban Development Esau Mwambira confirmed to The Daily Times <\/em>in an interview on Friday that the programme is facing difficulties to access the whole approved K14 billion funds from Treasury.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people say this program has flopped because of anomalies at the central government and district councils. We cannot deny that there might be some irregularities but the good thing is that many people are benefiting from the programme. Only that the main challenge is that we have not used the K14 billion as approved by Parliament,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Mwambira said they also requested for funds from the Treasury and by today (Friday) they had only used K5.8 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever people think we have accessed the whole K14 billion as a result they are assessing the programme depending on the approved funds,\u201d said Mwambira.<\/p>\n Treasury spokesperson Nations Msowoya said their records indicate that they released the approved funds for last year and they are yet to release from this year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Government Assurances Committee of Parliament has said it will demand explanations from government in the midyear budget review sitting of Parliament, set to start today, why the programme is faced with many challenges.<\/p>\n Speaking in an interview after touring the houses under the programme in Mchinji, Kasungu, Mzuzu, Nkhata Bay and Nkhotakota, Chairperson for the committee Harry Mkandawire said the few people who have benefited from the programme appreciate it because it has uplifted their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Decent and Affordable Housing Subsidy Programme commonly called Malata and Cement Subsidy is still facing challenges with the latest development that the responsible ministry has only received and used K5.8 billion in two years instead of the approved K14 billion. The National Assembly approved K7 billion in the National Budget for each year since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19323,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319\/revisions\/19323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}