Former Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) chief executive officer Allexon Chiwaya and director of human resource Daphter Namandwa yesterday pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and abuse of office levelled against them.
The two appeared at the Blantyre Magistrate’s Court yesterday for plea taking. They first appeared in the chambers of acting chief resident magistrate Godfrey Balaka and later appeared in chambers of magistrate Blackboard Elijah Dalikwiza Daniels where they were separately told of their charges before taking plea.
The two are being accused of abuse of office after instructing a transport manager at Escom to hand over a Toyota Hilux
registration number BU 7249, between April 2019 and July 2020, to former governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials for use instead of the company itself.
On the charge of fraud, the two are being accused of deceiving the finance department to put money in a Puma fuel card between 2018 to 2020 purpotedly to be used for Escom public events when in actual sense the card was being used by DPP members for party purposes.
But while the two took plea in Balaka’s chamber, only Chiwaya was allowed to take plea in Daniels’ chamber as Namandwa was told to look for a lawyer to represent him.
Namandwa later asked the court for more time to look for a private lawyer, pointing out that if he cannot afford to hire one,
then he will approach the Legal Aid Bureau for assistance. then he will approach the Legal
During plea taking, lawyer for Chiwaya, Enock Chibwana, was not present as he was also engaged at the High Court in Lilongwe.
But the State prosecution team, led by Dziko Malunda, said Chibwana had given a go-ahead that his client could take plea in his absence.
The two are expected to appear in Balaka’s chamber on February 26 where the State will start parading its witnesses, who are six in total, on the charge of abuse of office.
Meanwhile, Namandwa is expected to take plea on February 9 when the court will also issue directions on the fraud-related charge.
In an interview after both proceedings, Malunda said the State is ready to prosecute the two.
He said: “They both [took a not-guilty] plea, and because lawyer for the first accused [Chiwaya] is in Lilongwe, the matter has been adjourned to February 26 when we still start parading some of our witnesses.”
After the two took plea in Balaka’s chamber, Malunda also asked the court to impose bail conditions for the two since they were granted bail last year.
Among some of the bail conditions the court imposed include that the two must surrender their travel documents, report to the State Advocate offices in Blantyre once a month and surrender a surety worth K200 000.
The two were arrested last August before being granted bail. However, at the time, no bail conditions had been imposed on them.
