Malawi abolish 2nd, 3rd Principal Secretaries – Report

As part of the objective of the Pubic Service Reforms, Malawi government has made structural changes to bring sanity to the system and streamline positions to reduce the number of principal secretaries (PSs) from the previous 96 to at least 40.

Chief Secretary to the Government, George Mkondiwa, has informed PSs that that the Peter Muthatika administration has abolished the positions of second or third principal secretaries (PSs) . They will now be known as chief directors.

However, the changes will not translate into savings to the taxpayer in the meantime as the chief directors will continue to get their benefits of 500 litres of fuel and a monthly salary of over K600 000, Weekend Nation reported on Saturday.

“Those who were calling themselves PS2 and PS3 will now be called chief directors. For instance, in the Ministry of Energy, we had a Secretary for Natural Resource, PS for Energy and a PS for Mining and Environmental Affairs. But what we have done now is that we are going to have a Secretary for Natural Resources and Mining then chief director (Energy) and chief director (Environment),” Mkondiwa is quoted saying.

The bloated number of PSs has been cited as one of the major causes of public service inefficiencies and a drain on public resources.

According to the newspaper report, Ministry of Education, will have a Secretary for Education then chief director (Higher Education) then chief director (Basic Education) while the Ministry of Health will have chief director (Administration) and chief director (Health Services).

Mkondiwa explained: “The controlling officer is the one who will be called the principal secretary. So, you will not have a situation where one ministry has a thousand PSs because it is structurally wrong. For the time being, these will continue getting their perks at the PS level but eventually when we continue reviewing the system there is going to be a difference between the PS and chief director in terms of packages.”

Mkondiwa described the development as a “stop-gap measure.”

T he Chief Secretary said: “ Ideally we should have one PS and then others should be technical directors but because we already have these people at PS level we need to find a way, under the reforms programme, to enhance productivity by appointing somebody to be in charge of a ministry not three people being in charge.”

The paper noted that before this development, Ministry of Labour had two PSs, one of whom was the Secretary for Labour Patrick Kabambe and the other, PS II, who was Olive Chikankheni; Ministry of Information had three PSs—Secretary for Information, Tourism and Culture who was Chimwemwe Banda then PS for Tourism and Culture then PS for E-Government.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and Ministry of Transport and Public Works, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and Ministry of Youth and Sports Development had two PSs each while the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security had three PSs, including one for National Registration Bureau.