{"id":68140,"date":"2018-07-06T08:46:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T06:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=68140"},"modified":"2018-07-06T08:46:58","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T06:46:58","slug":"parliamentarians-question-ombudsmans-relevance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/07\/06\/parliamentarians-question-ombudsmans-relevance\/","title":{"rendered":"Parliamentarians question Ombudsman\u2019s relevance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>BY WATIPASO MZUNGU, <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>A CONTRIBUTOR:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Members of Parliament (MPs) under the Legal Affairs Committee have questioned the relevance of the Office of the Ombudsman following revelations that some government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) do not comply with determinations.<\/p>\n<p>The lawmakers made the remarks on Wednesday at the end of a three-day interface meeting with Ombudsman Martha Chizuma-Mwangonde.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union financed the meeting through its Chilungamo (Justice) Programme.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic Progressive Party MP for Thyolo South West, Allan Chiyembekeza, wondered whether the National Assembly had, at the time of inception, given the Ombudsman enough powers to allow the office to enforce law as is the case with other governance institutions and law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are compliance levels low among MDAs? Why are MDAs defying your determinations? Is it because your office is not known or doesn\u2019t have teeth [to bite]?\u201d Chiyembekeza asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo we need this office at all?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>University of Malawi governance and development consultant, Henry Chingaipe, said although there is \u201cserious lack of respect for governance institutions among MDAs\u2019 controlling officers\u201d, the Office of the Ombudsman is critical when it comes to entrenching the rule of law and good governance in the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we have observed is that, minus various variations, democratic culture, some controlling officers don\u2019t like the face of the person holding the office. So they tend to disregard any directive coming from that office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Chingaipe, who was consulting for the Ombudsman, said the sustainable way to deal with cases of non-compliance is to deal with the system.<\/p>\n<p>He further proposed the introduction of a law that will hold controlling officers personally accountable in the event of impunity and non-compliance to the Ombudsman\u2019s determinations.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Legal Affairs Committee Chairperson, Maxwell Thyolera, said non-compliance by MDAs with the Ombudsman determinations entrenches a culture of impunity in the public sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY WATIPASO MZUNGU, A CONTRIBUTOR: Members of Parliament (MPs) under the Legal Affairs Committee have questioned the relevance of the Office of the Ombudsman following revelations that some government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) do not comply with determinations. The lawmakers made the remarks on Wednesday at the end of a three-day interface meeting with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68140","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\/68140","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=68140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68144,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68140\/revisions\/68144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}