Parliament has said it will start recovering allowances from Members of Parliament (MPs) who will be absent from committee and plenary meetings.<\/p>\n
Speaker Richard Msowoya said this in his communication to MPs at the beginning of Monday sitting.<\/p>\n
He said the decision has been made following observation on increased cases of absenteeism made in a meeting of chairpersons of committees.<\/p>\n
He said a meeting of business committee held on Monday last week made a similar observation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish to remind the House that attendance by the honourable members to parliamentary committee is a hallmark of representative democracy. Therefore, this is not being achieved when a lot of the members are absent from those meetings, and this also affects the image of the institution of Parliament to the public as it ends [up] being dented,\u201d Msowoya said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIn view of this observation, the committee of chairs and supported by the leaders of political parties represented in the business committee resolved that, with immediate effect, the office should recover allowances from members who do not attend the plenary and committee meetings without leave of absence or without valid reasons as required by Standing Order 41.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to sources, MPs get allowances through their bank accounts. Depending on availability of funding, this may happen before, during or after the meetings.<\/p>\n
Standing Order 41, which Msowoya cited talks about seat allocation to MPs and leave of absence.<\/p>\n
\u201c(2) a Member of Parliament who is granted leave of absence is excused from the service of the Assembly or any committee. The leave is forfeited if the member attends in the Chamber of the Assembly or attends a committee before the end of the period of leave. 41(3) a member who is absent without seeking leave of absence shall forfeit all allowances during the period of absence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Absenteeism has been one of the issues of concern in Parliament. In November last year, it was discovered that eighty-one members were absent when an issue required voting.<\/p>\n
That time the House had 192 MPs, with only one vacant seat (Zomba Chisi).<\/p>\n
Then Leader of the House, Francis Kasaila, said it was government\u2019s expectation that the MPs would be attending parliament sittings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose MPs were elected by their constituents. I believe the constituents are able to follow what the MPs are doing,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
Leader of Opposition Lazarus Chakwera also spoke against the behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be those who will always have valid reasons. In general, we do not excuse members of Parliament who should be there but they are not there. This trend must change. Not just because you will have a vote at a certain time but it is important for us to represent the people we represent all the time that is necessary,\u201d Chakwera said then<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parliament has said it will start recovering allowances from Members of Parliament (MPs) who will be absent from committee and plenary meetings. Speaker Richard Msowoya said this in his communication to MPs at the beginning of Monday sitting. He said the decision has been made following observation on increased cases of absenteeism made in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26588","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\/26588","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=26588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26593,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26588\/revisions\/26593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}