Mangochi Township residents Wednesday forced their Town Council secretariat to suspend all revenue collection within the town to pave the way for investigations into allegations of financial fraud in the council.<\/p>\n
The residents trading under the name Mangochi Concerned Citizens, have also agreed to invite the Anti -Corruption Bureau (ACB) to conduct an independent audit into the council\u2019s accounts which are suspected to have been leaking money through corruption.<\/p>\n
For about two months, the residents have been pressing the council to explain some of the dubious procurements and expenditures that seem not to be in line with acceptable public finance management practices, but the council had been playing hide and seek.<\/p>\n
But yesterday, the citizens mobilised themselves and demonstrated before converging at the council secretariat where they threatened to seal the offices if their demands for an audit were not met.<\/p>\n
After a four hour meeting which attracted officials from the council, councillors, and the Malawi Police Service, the meeting agreed for a civil disobedience in which all residents and businesspersons within the township will not be paying taxes, ground rates and market fees until an audit is conducted.<\/p>\n
The meeting also resolved that the concerned citizens and the business community must be responsible for cleaning and refuse collection until the council is cleared of fraud allegations.<\/p>\n
Addressing the gathering at the end of the meeting, the citizens\u2019 Chairperson, George Hamisi, said as residents they are concerned with the levels of evidence of misappropriation of funds by officials at the council, a development which he said is depriving them quality services.<\/p>\n
Of particular concern is how the council procured 350 chairs meant for the Mangochi multi-purpose hall at an inflated price which the council is failing to explain to the people.<\/p>\n
The council bought 350 plastic at a total of K1,181,000 but indicated to have spent K1.6 million.<\/p>\n
In his remarks council Chairperson, Ibrahim Kacheya, said the council will work towards speeding the process of engaging the auditors in order to clear its image.<\/p>\n
Recently, a former district commissioner, Jack Nguluwe, a procurement officer, Micheal Khoko and some councillors were arrested by the ACB on allegations that they defrauded the government money at Mangochi District Council. The case is in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mangochi Township residents Wednesday forced their Town Council secretariat to suspend all revenue collection within the town to pave the way for investigations into allegations of financial fraud in the council. The residents trading under the name Mangochi Concerned Citizens, have also agreed to invite the Anti -Corruption Bureau (ACB) to conduct an independent audit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44354","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\/44354","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=44354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44362,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44354\/revisions\/44362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}