Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) Board on Monday suspended Chief Executive Officer. Foster Mulumbe and Director of Operations Feckson Kantonga to pave way for an internal investigation into the dubious purchase of maize from Zambia.<\/p>\n
In an interview yesterday, Admarc Board Chairperson James Masumbu confirmed the development, adding that a special committee has been instituted comprising three board members and other stakeholders from the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, the Department of Human Resource Management and Development and the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development.<\/p>\n
He further said the committee is expected to submit its findings by April 20, after which the board will meet the following day to decide the fate of the two officials.<\/p>\n
The committee is expected to have its first meeting this coming Friday and another one next week.<\/p>\n
Reports from both the commission of inquiry which was instituted by President Peter Mutharika and the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Agriculture and Public Accounts faulted the conduct of Mulumbe in the purchase of maize from Zambia.<\/p>\n
Mulumbe was sent on leave in January soon after Mutharika instituted the commission of inquiry but he returned to work in early March.<\/p>\n
His return sparked controversy, with civil society organisations asking the President to dismiss Mulumbe, but the government insisted that the disciplinary hearing could only be handled by the Admarc Board.<\/p>\n
In its report, the presidential commission of inquiry recommended that disciplinary actions be taken against Admarc management for failure to follow procurement procedures and entering into contracts fraudulently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commission finds that certain conduct of Admarc officials in executing the Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF) contract amounts to fraud and exposes Admarc and ultimately the government to civil litigation,\u201d the report reads in part.<\/p>\n
Former agriculture minister, George Chaponda, who was also implicated in the commission of inquiry report, was fired by Mutharika after pressure mounted on the head of state for shielding the former minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) Board on Monday suspended Chief Executive Officer. Foster Mulumbe and Director of Operations Feckson Kantonga to pave way for an internal investigation into the dubious purchase of maize from Zambia. In an interview yesterday, Admarc Board Chairperson James Masumbu confirmed the development, adding that a special committee has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43831","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\/43831","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=43831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43838,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43831\/revisions\/43838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}