HRDC demands immediate release of Public Sector Systems Review report
Barely a few hours after State Vice President Dr. Saulos Klaus Chilima has presented a report on the Public Sector Systems Review to State President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera at Kamuzu Palace on Friday, the Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has demanded that its contents be made public.
Led by its national chairperson Gift Trapence, national coordinator Luke Tembo and regional coordinators, the coalition states that Public Sector Reform is long overdue process and Malawians have always believed it to be one of the areas that needed an overhaul in a bid to transform the civil service in terms of performance, maladministration and curbing corruption.
Their demand is contained in a statement the grouping issued on Friday shortly after Chilima had presented the report to Chakwera.
“Our demand is that this report should be made public to ensure that every Malawian has access to it, should they need to,” states the letter in part.
The firebrand human rights activists emphasize that while it is celebrating the bold decision the Tonse Alliance administration has undertaken to reform the public service, they are disappointed by the privacy surrounding the presentation of ‘this highly-anticipated report to President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera at Kamuzu Palace’.
They say it is their considered view that the presentation of the report on the review of government systems should have been a public event to allow every one, as stakeholders in the government, to be able to follow and understand the process and outcomes.
“Our call for accountability and transparency is based on the fact that only when these outcomes and recommendations are made public will Malawians be able to fully adopt and embrace them. For us, at HRDC, public reform needs a multisectoral approach, including the active participation of citizens. It needs the input of different stakeholders so that they are able to take part in the monitoring and implementation of the roadmap,” says Trapence and his team.
They argue that citizens, who are the taxpayers, can only appreciate the importance of this report if it is made public, stressing that the nature of the secrecy in unveiling the report today raises all manner of questions and one tends to wonder what the Presidency is seeking to achieve.
“The government needs to learn that it is only by allowing a level of transparency that they will have the full support of the citizens. We take the liberty to remind the Presidency that access to information is now a public right as per section 37 of the Constitution as read with the Access to Information Act No. 17 of 2017,” thus concludes HRDC.
There was no immediate comment from the State House.
HRDC timakunyadilani koma polani moto kaye…… let the president study it first…
He will come open soon…
Ine ndikuona ngati awa a ma NGO achita phuma. The report was commissioned by the president, to whom it was submitted only on Friday.
Ndiye mwini wake asanayiwerenge mukufuna akupatseni iniyo?
No, no, no. Chakwera is a good man but let’s not take him for a fool. Let’s choose our battles carefully. Allow the President to read the report first. After all, he can even disagree with some of its contents and ask his boys to make revisions.
Once he is satisfied with it, he may choose to implement some, all, or none of the recommendations
komatu kuomba mmanja kwinanso. let the report be released
Inde awuze
Your excellency, if there was a lesson I wish our land could appreciate more of , it would be that of “having an abundance mindset”. I have the conviction that this alone could move our developmental levels a great deal.
Mukuvutitsa kwambiri a Luke Tembo. Be patient please.
Let the President peruse it and make comments before the report can be released to the public as a matter of procedure
In this era of democracy, people do not want to be left in the dark. Again, civil society organizations would like to run government bussiness through the back door
Double standards/Double faced; that is the practice. Not a week ago people cried foul when the appointment of Chief ACB was done in crossed doors. This report comes out barely a week after the above-mentioned, why not follow the transparency route before the stakeholders even demand the same? Let us wait and see if the famous “Walking the Talk” belief will be adhered to. This world is cyclic and ‘Gona n’kuphe salipatali’.
(Deliberately posted this knowingly some party affiliate is not going to have this published. As long as that somebody has read it, it is well with me!!).
I dont understand why Laz and SKC always want to pull stunt with such issues. Why make all the noise about a presentation whose contents you know will not be made public. Disgusting. Good for daft followers
Strange how they asked for our input but don’t let us view the output