Malawi Police rejects corruption allegations, recruitment of DPP cadres
Owen Khamula – Nyasa Times
Malawi Police at its National Headquarters in Lilongwe are fiercely fighting damaging allegations that the law enforcers this year’s intake recruitment exercise has been marred by high level of corruption from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials to senior police officers.
Tomeck Nyaude, deputy police spokesperson at the Police National Headquarters said the corruption allegations are false.
“The police is a public institution and we recruit police officers according to laid down procedures. We advertise for the posts and the qualifications. We do interviews and screen all aspiring police officers. No bribes and corruption is involved,” said Nyaude.
This follows serious flaws in the way the police are recruiting current police officers who are supposed to start training on June 1, 2016.
Most of them, according to evidence we have in our possession, did not even apply for the job but managed to buy the appointment letters with money ranging from K50, 000 to K200, 000 per person.
Senior officers at the Human Resources and other departments took advantage that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) top officials gave them a list of DPP cadres to be enlisted for the training.
The toothless graft busting body, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, according to our sources, has stood aside as usual as the mess at the recruitment process continues.
Over aged young men, married men and women who had given birth turned up for the training at Kanjedza in Blantyre forcing officials to turn back close to 300 of them and immediately replaced them with others without doing interviews.
But Nyaude said the police believes in transparency and accountability.
“If you come to the police headquarters, or any police station, you will be greeted with a message which says we do not condone bribery and corruption. We look at academic qualifications, the appearance especially the height and others laid down in our employment procedures,” said Nyaude.
Civil activists however fear the government decision to employ DPP cadres is more than giving them a steady job after the election but rather to steal the 2019 general election following low political ratings of the ruling party because of the bad economy and persistent food shortages.
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