A rights group has accused President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera of ordering Speaker of the National Assembly Catherine Gotani Hara to postpone parliamentary committee meetings on the pretext of Covid-19 prevention in order to cover up abuse of Covid-19 funds
In a statement yesterday, CDEDI Executive Director Sylvester Namiwa said that independent investigations have shown that the Speaker got instructions from her boss to ensure that Parliament is not functional during this time, in an attempt to cover up the abuse of the Covid-19 funds.
Namiwa said their expectation was that the parliamentary committees such as those on Health, Budget and Finance, Public Accounts Committee and the Welfare Committee, were supposed to meet to discuss the MK6.2 billion which has mysteriously grown wings at the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA).
“We have noted that President Chakwera and Hon. Gotani Hara prioritized the meetings for the Public Appointments Committee (PAC) of Parliament, solely to discuss the firing of the two Commissioners for the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) and the appointment of the Director General (DG) for the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA),” he said.
He then challenged Hara taking advantage of the world of technology to ensure that such committees, or better still the whole national assembly resume its meetings.
Parliament in January cancelled committee meetings and this month the midterm budget review meeting which was expected to start on February 8 was postponed to February 22.
Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Gladys Ganda recently demanded that the committee should meet to discuss the looting of K6.2 billion.
