When I walk into the thick of trouble, keep me alive in the angry turmoil. With one hand strike my foes, With your other hand save me. Finish what you started in me, God. Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now. – Psalm 138:8
These past two weeks, the Malawi communications airwaves went berserk with the plunder of the spoils of the COVID-19 pandemic funds, specifically allowances, accountability, and non-compliance to presidential directives. And instead of the president speaking to the nation on the state of the pandemic in the country, was compelled to deal with the issue of allowances, the call to duty of civil servants, and integrity of persons mandated with government issues.
What is all the incredulity about, one might ask. As flustered and flabbergasted as Malawians were during the Cashgate saga, Malawians are open-mouthed again that some unscrupulous and selfish individuals, an entire nationwide truckload of them appear to have disappeared incredibly obscene amounts of moneys meant for COVID relief. This in the middle of large members of the Malawi population catching the virus, and increasing numbers of them dying, it is depressing that there are some people that are diving into the pool of money meant to buy protective gear for health care workers, medicines for the Covid patients, and other needed items like sanitizers.
“Every week, I use these weekly updates to inform you of the actions we have taken in the last seven days to save the lives of those infected with Covid-19 and to stop the spread of the virus,” President Chakwera said in his opening February 14, 2021 weekly address to the nation.
He applauded the drop in the positivity rates and increased numbers of those recovering from COVID and praised the work of health personnel. The President informed Malawians of the 100,000 additional AstraZeneca vaccines coming from the African Union next week and for use for the protection of Malawi health workers.
The president spent the majority of his address on his “outrage over the alleged abuse of funds and lack of financial accountability for the same by certain clusters (that were) entrusted with 6.2 billion Kwacha for tackling the pandemic.” Ironically the government has released another 17 billion to fight the second wave the COVID pandemic in the country.
Sadly, due to shoddy accountability, shown through lack of supporting documents, and failure to maintain proper records of how such critical funds were disbursed, has compelled President Chakwera to suspend all cluster heads, with heads rolling at Department of Disaster Management (DODMA) and the technical co-chair of the Taskforce on Covid-19.
Another eyesore tackled by President Chakwera was waste, abuse, and theft of public resources that he labeled as “behaviors that have poisoned our values as a nation and have corroded our entire government system.”
Chakwera lashed out that “for 27 years, the government system has been rigged with bad or old laws, procedures, policies, and contracts that are cleverly designed to not only facilitate waste, abuse, and theft, but to also protect those who engage in these acts.” He paraded three systems at work in the government that are outlaying spoilers in the way things are done in Malawi. These are namely, the system of allowances, the system of procurement, and the system of civil servant’s employment contracts.
On the issue of allowances and their origins, was a heated debate in social media. There was talk of Brown Envelopes with a “Take the money and go, instructed not to ask questions and nowhere to sign.” And one former government officer said that they “used to receiving Brown Envelopes from the days of Bakili Muluzi. There was no signing, you just said a “Thank you” if you’re cultured, and then off you go!
I countered this by affirming that the Brown Envelopes came after Malawi had already been baptized with allowances culture for attending meetings in the run-up to multiparty discourse in the early 1990s. The Muluzi administration came and filled the void left by donors. This is because after multiparty government was installed in 1994, the donors took their bags of money and left Malawi to agitate in another country to establish multiparty governance. The donors that remained stopped giving allowances, thereby leaving the void that political parties then filled to attract membership.
Socrates asked me: So we should blame donors? My swift response was a hearty yes. The allowance craze reached climatic proportions in the early 1990s just as Malawi was pushing for democratic change. The donors stepped all over themselves to get participants to attend their workshops. When Malawi became a multiparty state in 1994, the bags of money exited the country.
“It is the whole system that is corrupt and therefore it is the whole system that we must clean up,” President Chakwera summed.
On a brighter note, the head of state has added to the Taskforce on Covid-19 representatives of Civil Society Organizations and watchdog bodies like the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Malawi Human Rights Commission.
Additionally, a very welcomed move was that of delegating to the Vice-President Saulos Klaus Chilima, who is also Minister of Public Sector Reforms, to coordinate a special Taskforce formed in consultation with President Chakwera and to begin and prioritize a review of three villainous government systems. He expects recommendations on his desk for their overhaul within three months.
“The Malawian people, put me here to bring this kind of radical change, and whether anyone likes it or not, change has come.”
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