While majority of Malawians are grappling with the harsh economic times the country is experiencing, Cabinet Ministers who double as Members of Parliament (MPs) are said to be wallowing in financial opportunities in terms of extra loans and questionable allowances.<\/p>\n
Parliament was informed yesterday that apart from getting K24 million car loan accorded to MPs, the Ministers have a chance to apply for another loan at the Office of President and Cabinet (OPC) worth K5 million.<\/p>\n
According to Dowa East Parliamentarian, Richard Chimwendo Banda, the ministers also enjoy a K1 million furniture allowance, K1 million allowances for hotel stay after being appointed into cabinet and collect K45, 000 each time they escort President Peter Mutharika on duty calls.<\/p>\n
The revelations by Banda, who chairs Parliamentary Committee of Environment, caught most ministers unaware and it took a bit of time before government Chief Whip Henry Musa rose and vehemently challenged the K5m loan as untrue.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Mussa did not object to reports that as Cabinet Ministers, they are enjoying duty free status for a third vehicle imported or the questionable huge allowances they supposedly get from the national cake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese ministers should not stand here and sound as if they are saints when they are getting millions in allowances plus they are privileged to get a K5 million loan from OPC. It\u2019s public money and they have to be accountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all want to pass the budget but they must not sound more serious than some of us just because we are also pushing for fulfilment of conditions of service,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n
There was chaos in the House following the allegations as a number of ministers including Minister of Health Peter Kumpalume and Minister of Home Affairs Jappie Mhango demanded First Deputy Speaker Esther Mcheka \u2013Chilenje to strike-off the claims from the Hansard saying the remarks were tainting the reputation of the ministers.<\/p>\n
The Ministers also asked Mcheka- Chilenje to order Banda to bring into the house evidence to substantiate the claims, a request the Deputy Speaker agreed.<\/p>\n
But Banda hit back arguing that the information he had provided is already in the public domain and that the Speaker has powers to summon officials from OPC, who he said would confirm the information.<\/p>\n
The issue seemed to have overwhelmed the members, forcing Mcheka -Chilenje to rule the whole House out of order for discussing matters concerning their conditions of service during plenary, a development Mwanza Central parliamentarian, Davis Katsonga, had described as \u201cirregular\u201d.<\/p>\n
The chaos forced Mcheka-Chilenje to suspend proceedings in the House twice after the MPs insisted that the issue of their conditions of service be resolved before discussing any further business.<\/p>\n
As soon as Parliament reconvened yesterday, the MPs demanded that the issue be resolved before discussing the national budget which Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe presented two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
In the morning, the House was suspended for over an hour after the MPs insisted that Gondwe and the Parliamentary Welfare Committee should meet to resolve the matter.<\/p>\n
After the morning suspension, proceedings were suspended again in the afternoon as both sides of the House could not agree on which agenda to discuss between the budget and the MPs\u2019 entitlements.<\/p>\n
It had to take Leader of Opposition, Lazarus Chakwera, to bring the situation under control when the House reconvened after the second suspension.<\/p>\n
He asked concerned parties to discuss and bring a report to the House while debate on the budget continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have every confidence that if and where we are required to state our minds on issues, issues that touch this country, we should not be the ones asking to be consulted. This country belongs to all of us and we must be seen to be talking to each other,\u201d said Chakwera.<\/p>\n
His sentiments were seconded by government Chief Whip Henry Mussa who hailed Chakwera for \u201crising above petty politics\u201d and Mcheka-Chilenje asked chairperson of the Budget and Finance Committee, Rhino Chiphiko, to wrap up his response to Gondwe\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, even after calm appeared to have returned in the House, there was marked discontent among the lawmakers such that only two of them responded to Gondwe\u2019s statement, with the rest showing no interest at all.<\/p>\n
This compelled Mussa to move for an early adjournment which came a few minutes after 4pm. \u2014Additional reporting by MacDonald Thom & Alick Ponje <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While majority of Malawians are grappling with the harsh economic times the country is experiencing, Cabinet Ministers who double as Members of Parliament (MPs) are said to be wallowing in financial opportunities in terms of extra loans and questionable allowances. Parliament was informed yesterday that apart from getting K24 million car loan accorded to MPs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26249","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\/26249","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=26249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26255,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26249\/revisions\/26255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}