Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) has put its foot down not to discipline some of its staff who allegedly authorised Speaker of Parliament Richard Msowoya and his two deputies to be drawing extra house allowances without approval from Parliament.<\/p>\n
Graft-busting body, Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB)\u2014 which instituted a probe into the alleged corruption involving the two deputies, Esther Mcheka-Chilenje and Clement Chiwaya\u2014 recommended in its report issued last month that Parliament Secretariat should recover money which was being \u201cillegally\u201d paid as house allowance to Msowoya as well as discipline the two deputies Mcheka-Chilenje and Chiwaya.<\/p>\n
ACB also recommended that Administration Clerk, Leonard Mapemba, be disciplined for negligence which led to Parliament being swindled of millions in house allowance.<\/p>\n
But PSC spokesperson Vitus Dzoole Mwale earlier trashed the findings by the bureau\u2019s report saying it had so many gaps and had to be sent back.<\/p>\n
Asked on whether the commission is ready to discipline some of the officers as recommended by ACB report, Mwale said the commission only requested the bureau to investigate Chiwaya and Mcheka- Chilenje wondering why the report was also faulting Parliament staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is the bureau not coming out clearly on the fraud by the two deputies, we are not shielding any staff but we are just wondering why the report is failing to state clearly that the two deputies were staying in their own houses and drawing extra house allowance at the same time and that\u2019s clearly fraud. The Speaker should not be accused of any wrong doing because the money was being paid to his landlord.\u201d<\/p>\n
ACB Deputy Director General Reyneck Matemba said the bureau is yet to meet and decide on how to proceed with the report which was sent back to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe received PSC response to the bureau\u2019s investigations report concerning the deputy speakers on Wednesday last week. It might be premature at this stage to say whether or not the bureau would conduct a fresh probe. A decision on the way forward on this matter should be made in the course of the week,\u201d said Matemba.<\/p>\n
Chiwaya and Chilenje declared their houses as belonging to estate agents, thereby forcing parliament to give an extra K300, 000 a month, since it was perceived that the houses they are staying in are rented.<\/p>\n
In her written response to the query by the committee dated August 21, 2015, Mcheka- Chilenje states: \u201cI wish to state in as far as the issue of housing is concerned, I have always been guided by the terms and conditions of service for the Deputy Speaker as furnished and confirmed to me by the Clerk of Parliament who is Secretary to the Parliamentary Service Commission and controlling officer of the National Assembly dated 19th June 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minutes of an extra \u2013ordinary meeting of PSC held on July 13 2014 show that a recommendation was made to revise accommodation rates from K450,000 to K750,000 for Speaker, K150,000 to K550,000 for Deputy Speakers while leader of opposition rate went up to K550,00 from K100,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) has put its foot down not to discipline some of its staff who allegedly authorised Speaker of Parliament Richard Msowoya and his two deputies to be drawing extra house allowances without approval from Parliament. Graft-busting body, Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB)\u2014 which instituted a probe into the alleged corruption involving the two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26088","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\/26088","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=26088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26091,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26088\/revisions\/26091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}