New Group Chief Executive Officer for Press Corporation Limited George Partridge has expressed concern over an \u201cincreasing number and magnitude of frauds\u201d in the country.<\/p>\n
Partridge laid bare his concerns in an exclusive interview with Malawi News this week.<\/p>\n
He indicated he found the degree of moral decay in the country rather staggering in its proportion and he described it as a national challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moral decay in our society and its trajectory worries me a lot and is truly a national challenge of gargantuan proportions. I spent sleepless nights to figure out what can be done about this menace,\u201d he said as he detailed how he rose through the ranks in the banking sector.<\/p>\n
Partridge said the Cashgate saga, for instance, in which civil servants looted up to K24 billion of public money within days and the rampant corruption elsewhere in Malawi\u2019s systems, are a manifestation of the level of moral rot in the society.<\/p>\n
The PCL chief also expressed reservations with the \u201cactions and inactions\u201d of law enforcement systems in the country.<\/p>\n
He said in spite of \u201cso many imaginative controls experts can devise, it has been made even more difficult because of the way all relevant institutions which we think are supposed to be part of the solution are looking like they are now increasingly being part of the problem itself through their actions or inactions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said this moral degeneration is down in part to the belief that crime is beneficial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe perception out there is that crime in Malawi, on balance of probabilities, does pay. I am talking here about the role of our institutions whose actions or inactions seem to be subtly condoning such errant behaviours, and that includes law enforcement agencies and the whole judicial system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said fraud and corruption have also become a major challenge to banks in Malawi.<\/p>\n
Partridge said banks are often accused for lack of progress on development, for high interest rates, for currency shortages, for fluctuating exchange rates and even for \u2018cash-gate\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry image has been battered for some time and is blamed for things that it is not responsible for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Such accusations put a lot of pressure on bankers, he said, particularly those who are at CEO position to manage such negative views.<\/p>\n
\u201cKey is civic education, taking every opportunity to create goodwill by explaining the role of banks, especially commercial banks in society and its limitations on what they can do and what they cannot do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Partridge was Chief Executive Officer for National Bank for 10 years until the announcement of his appointment as PCL\u2019s Group CEO in August. He started work last month.<\/p>\n
Press Corporation Limited is Malawi\u2019s largest conglomerate and is listed on the London Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n
It has stakes in Ethanol Company Limited, Carlsberg Malawi, Limbe Leaf Tobacco Company Limited, Macsteel Malawi Limited, Malawi Telecommunications Limited, Maldeco Fisheries, National Bank of Malawi, Presscane Limited, Press Properties Limited, People\u2019s Trading Centre Limited, Puma Energy Malawi and Telekom Networks Limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Group Chief Executive Officer for Press Corporation Limited George Partridge has expressed concern over an \u201cincreasing number and magnitude of frauds\u201d in the country. Partridge laid bare his concerns in an exclusive interview with Malawi News this week. He indicated he found the degree of moral decay in the country rather staggering in its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37650","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\/37650","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=37650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37652,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37650\/revisions\/37652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}