PS Chimwemwe Banda clings to office at Information despite redeployment

Deployed Principal Secretary of Information, Tourism and Culture Ms Chimwemwe Banda is clinging to her office and continues to work in that capacity outside the country 10 days after she was removed, Nyasa Times can reveal.

As a consequence, operations in the ministry have almost grounded since the new PS Justin Saidi cannot access his new office and handovers have not yet been done.

On the day she was moved, upon getting wind of news of her redeployment, Chimwemwe Banda locked her office and took with her office keys to Namibia to attend the SADC Digital Migration Forum representing the Ministry.

Banda was removed as PS from the Ministry of Information, Tourism and Culture on the 19th of June 2015 and redeployed to the department of disaster Management (DODMA).

Government described her removal as normal but inside sources have told Nyasa Times that she was removed for among others things ‘‘gross financial abuse of her office’’.

Nyasa Times has also established that the conference Banda apparently left for on the 19th of June, 2015 to attend at Pretoria Hotel in Walvis Bay, Nambia, actually started on the 22nd June 2015. She was there three days in advance.

Chimwemwe Banda attended the conference against her Minister’s directive to delegate to the Director of Information Dr Bright Molande so that she and her Minister; Kondwani Nankhumwa could attend to budget deliberations in Parliament.

Parliament was discussing the Ministry of Information’s allocation that week..

Investigations by Nyasa Times have revealed that instead, Banda is idling in Johannesburg South Africa waiting to again travel to Nairobi, Kenya to attend yet another conference on ICT again as Principal Secretary for Information.

The conference in Kenya is set to start on the 1st of July 2015 to the 3rd of July.

If Banda attends this meeting, she would have been travelling from one country to another masquerading as Principal Secretary of information fifteen days after she was removed.

Banda said there is nothing wrong with her conduct, saying “ trips were already approved and funded in my name.”

This is not the first time Banda’s name has been mirrored in mal administration and financial abuse. She was removed as Director of Programmes from Malawi Broadcasting Corporation in 2012 after an audit revealed massive financial mismanagement linked to her name.

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