NICE Trust has said it is the responsibility of every Malawian to know how public funds are being utilised at both local and central government levels.
The sentiments were said by NICE Trust Executive Director Ollen Mwalubunju during the opening day of NICE Trust officers two day training in Public Expenditure Tracking (PET) in Lilongwe.
According to Mwalubunju, every Malawian do pay tax and has to know how that money is being used by government.
“All Malawians regardless of whatever the status, in one way or the other they are taxpayers. For example, in shops they pay Value Added Tax (VAT) whenever they have bought something. Resources that we are all paying should be put into effective usage so that we should see meaningful and quality services in agriculture and health among other sectors,” Mwalubunju said.
The NICE Trust boss said the project is aimed at contributing in accountability in terms of usage of public resources and it is also contributing to reduction of corruption which is still a challenge in most government sectors.
He added that for every country to progress, accountability and transparency on how public funds are being used remain a backbone.
According to Mwalubunju, the workshop on PET will help the NICE officers to advance their knowledge on tracking how public funds are being utilized.
“We do appreciate that there have been initiatives on the ground aimed at tracking public expenditure but we are still having some gaps. Malawi is big and the aim of this training to our officers is to add skills on how to track public funds so that Malawians should be aware of how their taxes are being used by government,” Mwalubunju said.
