MDAs cling to lake meetings

Office of the President and Cabinet Secretary Colleen Zamba has said her office continues to receive memos from government ministries, departments and agencies asking for clearance to hold meetings at lake resorts, months after the government imposed a ban on such meetings. Zamba disclosed this in Lilongwe during a monthly meeting with principal…

Office of the President and Cabinet Secretary Colleen Zamba has said her office continues to receive memos from government ministries, departments and agencies asking for clearance to hold meetings at lake resorts, months after the government imposed a ban on such meetings.

Zamba disclosed this in Lilongwe during a monthly meeting with principal secretaries, at which she got work updates from them.

Stressing that she does not want government operations to be carried out at the lake, Zamba said the petitioners are throwing the card that development partners have committed resources to such meetings.

“The current government policy is that of no meetings at the lake and development partners have to align their programmes to that.

Don’t come to my office, saying the meeting is fully funded. Let us guide the donors. We are not just looking at the money spent on lake conferences but also the time,” Zamba said.

The SPC, who replaced Zanga-Zanga Chikhosi in May this year, said, during the two months she has been in office, she has observed laxity in the manner in which people do things.

She added that bureaucracy is compromising service delivery.

Zamba said she would not relent on the mission of promotting efficiency in service delivery in the civil service.

She implored controlling officers to ensure optimal use of resources, both financial and human, to maximise output.

“I have observed that there are still issues of misprocurement and [poor] finance management. People have to be aware of their responsibility, considering that we are dealing with scarce resources. There are also presidential directives on austerity measures we have to implement,” Zamba said.

However, transparency and accountability advocate Willie Kambwandira said, while the government is putting in place checks on public spending, there is a need to also deal with prevailing corruption in public service delivery systems.

“Otherwise, it does not make sense to save resources only for them [resources] to be misused by a few corrupt officials,” Kambwandira said.