Govt heads frustrate PAC
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has spit fire at some government controlling officers for disregarding meetings to give accounts on their respective ministries’ financial matters.
The committee had since “sent a strong warning” to the Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) to reason with the controlling officers.
The committee started meeting various heads of ministries last week in Lilongwe but, according to its vice-chairperson Kamlepo Kalua, several controlling officers failed to avail themselves and instead gave excuses.
“All these people were told in advance. Some were told two months ago, others three months and for them not to avail themselves surely it is something that puzzles the committee and we cannot comprehend,” he said.
The vice-chairperson, some of the principal secretaries that failed to present themselves at the meetings include those of ministries of Health; Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development; and Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare.
At the meetings, the committee is dealing with Treasury minutes which, according to Kalua, requires controlling officers to avail themselves before the committee.
“These people knew in advance what was expected of them because we have interacted with them before. We were dealing with Treasury minutes of 2008 to 2011. Now we have the current minutes from 2012 to 2017 and we cannot do the 2017 resolving the previous ones,” explained Kalua.
He said the committee had since written a strong warning to the Chief Secretary in the OPC, Lloyd Muhara, to reason with the controlling officers.
“This is serious and we are not going to compromise. We will see to it that these people avail themselves to the committee during this week,” said Kalua.
He said the committee is ready to work late hours to ensure they meet every controlling officer, including those that were supposed to appear before it last week.
“If they fail again we will have no choice but to summon the Chief Secretary himself and once that is done, we will shame them,” cautioned Kalua.
While Muhara and other controlling officers were not readily available yesterday, Secretary for Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development Joseph Mwandidya said in an interview he sent communication to the committee on the reasons for his failure to appear before the committee.
“I already sent communication to the committee so the whole communication is with PAC. I don’t think there is any further communication that I need to send out,” he said.
The committee had been complaining about most heads of government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) either failing to satisfactorily respond to emerging issues within their workplaces or failing to make themselves available when summoned.
