Opposition parliamentarians have vowed to take to task government\u2019s front bench in Parliament to account for money spent on President Peter Mutharika\u2019s trip to the 71st United Nations General Assembly (Unga) meeting in United States of America.<\/p>\n
Parliament is expected to start meeting in Lilongwe mid next month and outspoken Rumphi East legislator, Kamlepo Kalua, said in an interview yesterday that it is unfortunate that opposition members have no powers to demand for an emergency meeting of the House, saying there are already a number of pressing issues that simply cannot wait.<\/p>\n
Kalua\u2019s sentiments have coincided with an announcement by State House Press Office that Mutharika will arrive back home from a prolonged trip to the US, where according to his Press Secretary, Mgeme Kalilani, the President was still holding meetings with some officials who the President could not accommodate during the Unga session.<\/p>\n
But Kalua said there was no justification for Mutharika and his entourage to extend their stay in America, considering the economic hardships that majority of Malawians are facing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we will be punishing people to be paying tax on bread, to be paying tax on water, tax on electricity; these are serious issues yet we don\u2019t mind about the suffering of the people…He has overstayed in America than the budget we were given yet our people are suffering.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe they owe the people an explanation, why spend money instead of improving standard of living for the people, and why the secrecy and let them not attempt to arrest anyone because what the people were interested [in] was to know the whereabouts of their president,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kalua also has pleaded with Mutharika to rescind government\u2019s move to amend Value Added Tax, consequently removing exemptions and zero rating on basic commodities such as bread, tap water, milk and laundry soap.<\/p>\n
\u201cI urge government, and this is my plea to rescind this decision of taxing people on basic things such as bread, water and electricity. We should be avoiding this because this is pushing an innocent person too far at the interest of our own,\u201d Kalua said.<\/p>\n
On her part, Malawi Congress Party (MCP) parliamentarian for Dedza East, Juliana Lunguzi, described as lies promises by Foreign Affairs Minister, Francis Kasaila, that government would present a breakdown of Unga budget to Parliament.<\/p>\n
According to her, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led administration has never made such a presentation in the past and it was highly unlikely that such would be done this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe MPs will just be given a blockered figure and even the number of the people who accompanied the President will not be a true reflection. Why can\u2019t government just be transparent and tell the people how much it has cost the taxpayer. That is why we keep saying the ATI bill is important because we would easily access such information,\u201d Lunguzi said.<\/p>\n
But when it was put to him that the MPs failed in their duty by not stopping government from making the amendments, Kalua claimed he was among those who strongly objected to the proposals adding that those who never stood up betrayed their own constituents.<\/p>\n
Lunguzi also said that all spokespersons on finance from her party as well as Peoples Party (PP), including the Chairperson of Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament raised similar concerns on the VAT amendments but they were dismissed by the government side.<\/p>\n
\u201cParliament is a house of records and the records will show that even individual MPs spoke against the proposals, and when [Consumers Association of Malawi Executive Director] John Kapito is attacking members of Parliament now, it just means he is not privy to such information. but I challenge you that if you go through the hansard, you will see for yourself that members of Parliament did not support these amendments,\u201d Lunguzi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Opposition parliamentarians have vowed to take to task government\u2019s front bench in Parliament to account for money spent on President Peter Mutharika\u2019s trip to the 71st United Nations General Assembly (Unga) meeting in United States of America. Parliament is expected to start meeting in Lilongwe mid next month and outspoken Rumphi East legislator, Kamlepo Kalua, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33602","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\/33602","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=33602"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33608,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33602\/revisions\/33608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}