Shake up in civil Service top brass

President Lazarus Chakwera’s pursuit to enforce accountability for the K6.2 billion Covid-19 response funds feared mismanaged has registered more casualties with 10 principal secretaries (PSs), 28 district commissioners (DCs) and five other senior officers interdicted.

In an interview yesterday, presidential press secretary Brian Banda said the concerned controlling officers and Covid-19 response cluster heads have also been suspended from their substantive positions in the public service.

“They [controlling officers] have also been suspended in their respective jobs and positions in the civil service. They were in these Covid-19 clusters based on their posts and not as individuals,” he said.

The PSs or controlling officers suspended are from ministries of Health; Gender, Community Service and Social Welfare; Labour; Education; Homeland Security; Agriculture; Lands; Local Government; and Information. They join Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) commissioner George Chiusiwa whom the President removed on Sunday alongside Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 co-chairperson Dr John Phuka for purported technical slips.

Besides the 28 DCs, the interdictions have also extended to chief executive officers for Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba city councils; Kasungu and Luchenza municipal councils and Mangochi Town Council, according to Banda.

On why Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, the other co-chairperson of the task force was spared, he said that as Cabinet minister she will be subjected to a Cabinet assessment.

“The minister is a political head appointed by the President and her performance is subject to the Cabinet assessment which the President is undertaking.

“But with regards to Covid-19 response, the President has suspended the technical heads whose job is to control standards and expenditure as controlling officers,” Banda said.

There are 15 clusters of coordination; communication; health; water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash); protection and social support; economic empowerment; employment and labour force; education; security; transport; agriculture; nutrition; shelter; and local government.

But labour law expert Mauya Msuku has described the extension of the suspension to substantive positions of the cluster heads in the civil service as tricky, saying that interdiction must apply in cases where it can easily be proved that holding of office can potentially interfere with investigations. 

He said the presidential directive may not be sufficient to warrant interdiction or suspension as there has to be an administrative arrangement to communicate the same to affected employees in writing as well as grounds for the decision. 

Msuku said: “Essentially, the presidential directive is not sufficient that is why perhaps he directed the SPC [Secretary to the President and Cabinet] to effect the suspension not to be seen to be usurping power from institutions that handle employment matters.

“For PSs, it can be argued that the President has powers to make such action because they report to the SPC who is appointed by the President, but I insist that there has to be written communication on this.”

He argued that the officers should have been suspended or removed from clusters and not interdicting them on their substantive positions.

“It is a practice in government to interdict someone each time there is an allegation. It must be for a purpose, for example, where there is sufficient suspicion that they would prejudice the investigation.

“I do not really know the relationship between the PS and management of Covid-19 funds, but I think not every allegation must be subjected to interdiction and this is one case,” Msuku said.

On his part, Institute for Policy Interaction executive director Rafiq Hajat said the suspension has the potential to victimise some people while shielding actual wrongdoers.

He said suspending such a huge number of controlling officers may also affect the operations of government; hence, the leadership should have exercised caution.

“I believe the suspension was not done with regard to the due process. The rot appears to be much deeper so while we remove the chair, the next person who comes in may even be worse. We need to be careful on who we recruit next,” Hajat said.

While commending government for the bold step, Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence said there should be no selective implementation of justice. He said all public servants, including Cabinet ministers, must face the law if found on the wrong side of the law.

Delivering his sixth televised National Address on the War on Covid-19 from Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe on Sunday, the President said both Dodma and the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 require strong leadership.

He observed that the red flags regarding spending as raised by the Office of the Ombudsman in its November 2020 report titled Misplaced Priorities were missed and left unchecked by the technical leads of Dodma and the task force who report directly to his office.

The President also said expenditure reports submitted by clusters and the scrutiny that followed were presented to the technical leadership of the task force and Dodma months after the spending was already done.

Chakwera was also not amused with the Covid-19 response clusters for submitting “a substandard report that has no backing documents” and for defying a presidential directive to submit reports on a weekly basis”. Thus, he directed the Secretary to the President and Cabinet to immediately suspend all cluster heads, mostly controlling officers in ministries, departments and agencies to pave the way for a forensic audit the National Audit Office has already embarked on.

In an interview on Sunday evening, governance analyst Henry Chingaipe said the moves made by the President were in right direction but the decisions should have been made much earlier.

He also said the President should have put a timeline for the audit report and replacing of Dodma commissioner.