Controversy regarding the procurement of two state of the art buses that former President Peter Mutharika gave as a gift to Mighty Be Forward Wanderers and Nyasa Big Bullets refuses to die as latest revelations indicates that the buses were overpriced because the seller had found a desperate buyer.
The buses which were sold to Mutharika by Rashid Gaffar, a DPP member of Parliament for Blantyre Kabula Constituency and a Minister of Mining in the current Tonse Government are said to be valued at around K90 million each but Gaffar sold them to Mutharika, who claimed he was using his own money, at K150 million each.
Meanwhile, a week after being deposed from Government, revelations from the state house indicated that Mutharika had bought the buses from Gaffar using funds from the account number one (which is state owned), and this had come as a shock by looking at the significance of such an expensive purchase from an already constrained Malawian economy.
When asked regarding the morality of such a dubious business he did with the former president, Gaffar came out firing shots saying that as a businessman, he had every right to sell two of the six stocks of buses he had to anyone. The Minister acknowledged knowing how the former President was desperate for the buses and he capitalized on that by overcharging by close to 100% the actual price.
In the interview, Gaffar spoke with total disregard for the public outcry on the circumstances that surrounded the purchasing of the buses from him. Gaffar was also quoted as saying that the buyer (Mutharika) could have said it “if he were not satisfied with the price.” He continued; “By the way, I have four more buses and they could be sold at an even higher price. Asafuna Asiye, ended Gaffar.
Meanwhile, many commentators have faulted the Minister and questioned his moral values as he was given a government’s cheque, not Mutharika’s, thereby knowing that what he was getting was taxpayers’ quid, on a business that lacked integrity and honesty. That, coupled with the careless language that the Minister has used, has seemingly angered the general citizenry, who are even wondering how an accomplice of such a heartless mafia was considered for a Ministerial position in the current government whose some of its core values are Servant Leadership, Respect for the Rule of Law and Accountability.
“In the full knowledge of where the money had come from, for Rashy to say ‘I can sell at any price to a desperate buyer, asafuna asiye’, is iniquitous and functionally, it is equivalent of showing the Malawian taxpayer a middle finger”, said one of the angrily concerned citizen.
