Opinion: Firing Kalumo at Immigration is akin to letting corruption triumph. Let him stay and cleanse.
Dear Mr President
Thank you for not pandering to the bullying of the thieving cartel at the Immigration Department so far. I would like to sincerely tell you that the reason some of those employees want Brigadier Charles Kalumo out is because he is the first Commissioner General to take very direct and realistic measures to address corruption at that department, other than massaging it as others had been doing.
The Department of Immigration could be the most corrupt in Malawi among all departments that deal with issuance of public documents. The first smell you hear upon approaching the Immigration Department in Lilongwe is the stench of corruption. It smells tough.
Those employees each have his own dobadobas outside the building. The dobadoba’s role is to solicit huge amounts of money from service seekers partly by convincing them that if they don’t pay a bribe their passports will take ages to come out.
People who don’t pay bribes at the Immigration will have their information missing again and again, and they will keep submitting but without any hope. Those guys will just put the documents aside and not attend to them until the person has paid the extra fee. This is the cartel that Kalumo was seeking to break by directly confronting officers accused of such acts. And I have a reference point:
Last year, as I was getting out of court at the Industrial Relations Court, I saw a friend looking lost in the middle of the crowds queueing for services at the Immigration Department. I pierced my way into the crowd to locate him and take him aside. That’s when he told me that the person who had taken his extra money on the promise to timely help him had switched off his phone, but he was an Immigration Officer who had been introduced to him by a dobadoba who has also harvested his share from the amount paid. Neither could the dobadoba be seen around any more.
As I was trying to help this friend trace the dobadoba, he pointed to a group of young male and female students from Bunda who had been running out of patience as they had paid for their passports too long before but they were just being told their passports were not ready. They were now frustrated as the days to leave for an education trip were nearing. I personally know Charles Kalumo, so I quickly made a phone call and invited Charles to the spot where we were standing, outside his office. When he came and heard the stories, he immediately took the guys inside and asked them to identify the officers who were helping them. He confronted them and gave them an ultimatum of two hours to have the passports produced and delivered. He told his personal assistant to see to it that the instruction had been obliged and give him a report on the afternoon as he would be returning from a meeting. All this while I watched.
Kalumo’s approach is “management by walking around.” He would always take time asking service seekers randomly as to how long ago did they pay for their passports and what explanation were they being given for not being helped. With that, he would trace the compromised officers and directly confront them for not doing what is right. Definitely, those thieves are not happy with this. Not at all!
This, without doubt, is the main reason they want him. He could have other flaws, administratively, of course, but not to warrant these insane calls for his firing. Some of us know the truth.
President Chakwera, please, don’t let corruption triumph. Let Kalumo stay in office. Just find a way of firing all the compromised officers at the department. We know how much fight corruption puts in every time someone attempts to deal with. It is so resistant. But it must be fought. And Kalumo fought it very well.
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