Malawi ‘crisis’ meeting of top civil servants called
Chief Secretary to the Office of President and Cabinet (OPC) Hawa Ndilowe has summoned all public service directors and principal secretaries.to an unprecedented meeting on Wednesday following reports of high level corruption.
There have been fevered speculations on corrupt practices in the public service following the shooting of Budget Director Paul Mphwiyo recently.
Nyasa Times understands that Ndilowe has called for a crisis meeting Wednesday at Bingu International Conference Centre for all public service directors and principal secretaries- in what has been construed as a sign that there is crisis in the civil service.
Opposition DPP president Peter Mutharika told reporters on Monday that there is d “corruption crisis” in the country.
But political analyst at the University of Malawi, Mustapha Hussein, dismissed the claims, saying “We have a problem but we can’t classify it as a crisis.”
However, a top civil servant said “there are a lot of people who are nervous and afraid of being exposed” in the corruption syndicate.
“The corruption we are talking about has not started today, there is history to it and the current administration is making efforts to stop it and the corrupt will be hunted down,” said a top public servant.
This week, Malawi Council of Churches (MCC) also issued a statement expressing concern over high levels of corruption in public institutions and appealed to the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to bring graft cases to the very end to uproot the vice in the civil service.
In a statement signed by general secretary the Reverend Dr. Osborne Joda-Mbewe, MCC says: “It is also the council’s concern that high level corruption is taking place, in particular in the public sector where authorities and other staff connive with organised criminals to steal millions of public funds.
“This tendency has the potential to stall the development strides being experienced in the country and run counterproductive to government efforts, including the Economic Recovery Plan [ERP]. This development also threatens the trust that has recently been won back from Malawians and development partners.”
