Njobvuyalema demands accountability on floods aid as Malawi MPs pass K36bn loan

Opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) MP for Lilongwe Mapuyu South, Joseph Njobvuyalema, has told parliament that he had information some well wishers who donated money towards the flood disaster were complaining that they do not know how their monies were spent.

He asked Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development to explain how prudent the well-wishers support has been managed.

Njobvuyalema was contributing to the bill which Parliament on Wednesday authorized the government to borrow $80 million (MK36billion) from the International Development Association (IDA) for a four-year floods recovery project.

“We want to know where and how these monies were used. I also wonder why in the Bill the minister has allocated some money for training disaster management personnel when we have a fully fledged department of disaster management.

“We need to know what has happened to the well-wishers’ support and to what extent we received support so that we establish the gap and the importance of borrowing. I thought that would make a lot of sense,” said Njobvuyalema.

According to Njobvuyalema, from Account Number One, Malawi had a supplementary budget of about K500 million. Britain supported Malawi with K2.6 billion, Zambia donated US$20,000 which came up to K80 million, WFP supported with K100 million in terms of items and other things.

National Bank of Malawi gave out K20 million, World Vision K6.1 billion, Canada K470 million, ADMARC supported with a value of K6.5 million in terms of bags of maize and other things. Malawi Savings Bank gave out K5 million, MRA K2 million, HTD car dealer gave out K500 million, Old Mutual SAR300,000, which came to about K12 million, Malawi Confederation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry donated K40 million, MACRA K29 million, the Muslim Group of South Africa gave K60 million.

“With just this short list, the money is coming up to around K20 billion,” he said,

“We need to have a basis of what has been managed; is it restoration and what have you done, and then, what is the gap so that we see the necessity of this bill?”

Leader of the House, Francis Kasaila said government made an undertaking “to be transparent in how it handles these monies and the vice president even made a statement that all collections will be published in the papers. The minister of finance has provided enough information.”

Government seeks to access a K32 billion loan from World Bank to go towards post-floods disaster recovery costs

Minister of Finance, Goodall Gondwe, told the house in the capital Lilongwe that among others the funds will be used to respond to the immediate needs of flood victims, strengthen institutions to respond better to disasters as well as restore agriculture livelihoods.

“There are resources such as maize that needs to be bought immediately to benefit all disaster affected areas in the country,” he said.

He said the loan will be repaid over a period of 40 years with a grace period of ten years.

Recently, President Peter Mutharika appealed for local and international assistance after the flood disasters which affected tens of thousands of people in the country.

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