Address the political question in electricity corporation mess

My Lord,

The confidential report on the financial mess at Electricity Supply Corporation of Nyasaland, which is neither confidential nor guarded, reads like some work of fiction at least to those who do not know how corporations are supposed to operate in our country.

There is an entrenched systematic plunder of resources at the corporation where decisions on procurement are made and implemented like in a patriarchal village as possessive uncles share among themselves the deceased estate forgetting that there is a widow and her kids who legally own everything.

Some of us know that since the time of Chairman and his Yellow Party, corporations have become cows that had to be milked at all costs to fund party operatives, the establishment and all those malnourished by poverty but choose to support the governing party more like an idiot.

Corporations as you might have realised, are in essence used to reward faithful party followers and those who sympathise with the cause of the ruling establishment and nothing more.

As someone who got my present position at this institution after being a faithful cadet of Mapuya even during the two years of his incarceration, I laughed my lungs out at the recommendations made.

My Lord, the report shows that inefficiency permeates through the whole structure of the corporation that a complete overhaul is the only solution.

My Lord, the problem I have now is if the executive management is as compromised as the board is, who is going to solve the problem?

My Lord, I want to make an application that the task team that came up with the report should withdraw it because there is a bigger culprit who is responsible for the whole mess and is called the political benefactor.

The real source of the challenges affecting the institution is Mapuya himself who hires the board of Escon and his party operatives that are still milking the thin cow.

My Lord, the proposed sweeping exercises in the corporation will be a futile attempt as long as politicians continue to call the shots and as long as village heads who toe party line find themselves in boards of such organisations.

My Lord, I am just a cadet who was engaged for singing out aloud the “Apostle’s creed” of Mapuya, yet there are board members who supply goods and services to the corporation and whose proceeds fund some party activities.

Some executive officers own bogus companies that win tenders and nobody can question them.

My Lord, if the task team cannot single out the real source of the rot at the corporation, it renders the whole report exercise useless because us cadets will still find our way into such corporations since that is how loyalty is paid for in politics.

But I understand the dilemma the task team was in as they pondered on the person who would tie a bell to the cat as they were mere rats?

So as I write you, I am laughing that there is a useless Section 87 of The Public Finance Management Act somewhere which provides that an appointing authority may suspend without pay a controlling officer or a chief executive who intentionally or recklessly over-commits or overspends funds under his control or expends funds where there is no appropriation permitting such expenditure.

This Act will never be enforced as long as politics guide hiring and firing of boards and executive management in parastatals. So, should I take an injunction against the report or apply for a judicial review to question the legality of the task team?

Ine wanu cadet Wamagetsi

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