Parliament Friday ended its month-long meeting amid dissatisfaction by some MPs on how business was conducted in the House.<\/p>\n
In the meeting, government failed to table Access to Information Bill. Government did table land bills but they were not passed and were referred to committees of Gender, Natural Resources, and Agriculture for further scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Apart from passing Appropriation Bill, which was one of the processes of passing the K908 billion mid-year budget, the only notable Bill to be passed was Metrology Bill.<\/p>\n
Failure by Parliament to pass amendments to Corrupt Practices Act, as moved by Lilongwe South West MP, Peter Chakhwantha was another cause for concern.<\/p>\n
In his adjournment remarks, Leader of Opposition Lazarus Chakwera expressed disappointment on how business was conducted in the House.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur deliberations have clearly revealed the depth of our sickness. We need some remedy. We must go back to the drawing board. Currently the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening,\u201d Chakwera said.<\/p>\n
He also faulted the arrests of some MPs and another party member before and during the just ended meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Second Meeting of the 46th session of Parliament was a mixed bag. It was held within a context of depressing macro-economic conditions despite assurances by government that all is well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the bills that have not been tabled, Leader of the House Francis Kasaila said they will be handled in the next meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me assure the House that the remaining bills will be discussed in the budget meeting of Parliament,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
He had earlier on told the House that Access to Information Bill would not be tabled because Minister of Information was not feeling well yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the Bills we said we would prioritise is Access to Information Bill. Unfortunately the Minister who is supposed to table it has gone to hospital. He did not have enough time to delegate to another minister. We are hopeful that the bill will be tabled in the next meeting,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
Despite the explanation, Dowa East MP Richard Chimwendo Banda later wanted to find out more about the Bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a commitment that Access to Information Bill would be tabled in this meeting. We are about the rise but the Bill has not yet been tabled,\u201d Chimwendo Banda said.<\/p>\n
Speaker Richard Msowoya ruled him out of order, telling him that Kasaila had already explained.<\/p>\n
Msowoya hailed the MPs for the unity they showed during the meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parliament Friday ended its month-long meeting amid dissatisfaction by some MPs on how business was conducted in the House. In the meeting, government failed to table Access to Information Bill. Government did table land bills but they were not passed and were referred to committees of Gender, Natural Resources, and Agriculture for further scrutiny. Apart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20993","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\/20993","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=20993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20998,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20993\/revisions\/20998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}