Do a stock-taking on Chakwera promises after 5 years – Kampondeni

State House director of communications pastor Sean Kampondeni told reporters in Lilongwe on Monday morning that President Lazarus Chakwera is committed to ensuring that all key campaign promises are delivered at the end of his term of five years.

Kampondeni said during the second in a series of newly-introduced weekly State House briefings at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe on Monday that Malawian president is elected to stay in power for five years and therefore it is unfair to expect all the promises to be delivered in three months.

Chakwera is yet to clock 100 days of his five-year term of office.

“When a presidential candidate is running for office he is not running for three months. Not all that [campaign promises] can be accomplished in five years,” said Kampondeni.

Chakwera’s spin doctor added: “The President is committed to implement all the promises he made in the campaign trail.”

Several campaign promises have been ignored in the 2020/21 national budget, among others things, failure to roll out implementation of the pledged universal fertiliser subsidy, reducing fees for passports, duty free weeks, and zero-connection fees for electricity and water.

On creating one million jobs in a year – one of the key components of the Tonse Alliance manifesto –  the Minister of Finance Felix Mlusu said it will continue to be the main focus going forward.

He said the Tonse Alliance government has developed a road map which key activities that will be undertaken to facilitate the translation of such an agenda into action.

Mlusu said most of the sectors have enormous potential to create jobs if certain policy actions and incentives are implemented.

“Government will, therefore, implement policy actions and provide appropriate incentives to unleash this potential in sectors such as agriculture, mining, tourism, manufacturing and ICT,” he said.

The minister said the job creation agenda will be buoyed by a number of several initiatives that have already been initiated.

Some of the initiatives Mlusu mentioned included establishment of modern and fully equipped job centres which will first be established in Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu.