Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation George Chaponda on Tuesday defended the sacking of Louisa Kabwila, daughter to Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Publicity Secretary Jessie Kabwila, from the ministry.<\/p>\n
Louisa had her internship terminated at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation apparently because there isn\u2019t enough space at the ministry, but observers are arguing that she was simply a victim of her mother\u2019s \u2018sins\u2019 who was recently arrested on treason charges.<\/p>\n
But when the issue transiently arose in Parliament, Chaponda argued that the matter has just been blown out of proportion.<\/p>\n
He said Louisa was not employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation such that there was no way she could be fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was an intern and you all know that all interns are not civil servants with jobs anywhere in government. You all know the process of recruiting a civil servant,\u201d said Chaponda.<\/p>\n
He argued that the termination of Louisa\u2019s internship was due to the fact that some public officers who were in foreign missions had returned to Malawi and needed office space.<\/p>\n
The explanation seemed to have satisfied the House such that no one asked any follow-up question as has been the case with most contentious issues in Parliament.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Chaponda managed to defend an increase of nearly K2 billion in the allocation to his ministry and the allocation was given the nod by the lawmakers.<\/p>\n
He argued that the increase was largely due to fluctuations in the exchange rates, which has resulted in the local currency being eroded when placed against foreign currencies, particularly the United States Dollar.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonal emoluments have been revised from K7.38 billion to K9.336 billion due to exchange rate movement. Here we are also talking about salaries for diplomats in foreign missions. [Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT)] allocation has been increased from K5.669 billion to K6.9 billion,\u201d said Chaponda.<\/p>\n
He added that, among others, when the President travels abroad, officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are supposed to accompany him, meaning a travel ban cannot be completely applied to the ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation George Chaponda on Tuesday defended the sacking of Louisa Kabwila, daughter to Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Publicity Secretary Jessie Kabwila, from the ministry. Louisa had her internship terminated at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation apparently because there isn\u2019t enough space at the ministry, but observers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20369","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\/20369","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=20369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20376,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20369\/revisions\/20376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}