How Viphya plantations houses occupation chaos evolved, paving way for some faceless government officials to hijack management of the houses and collect rentals for over 400 of the houses for more than 30 years
By Deogratias Mmana:
In what could be a symptom of dereliction of duty over state assets, government slept and then got pushed out of management of over 400 houses at Viphya Plantations.
As government slumbered, what is feared to be a syndicate of officials within the system conspired to defraud the government. It started collecting rentals and has done so for more than 30 years now.
A report generated by one official in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change has uncovered some of the details — the chaos in the management and the general state of carelessness by those who should have been in control.
On the basis of the findings in the report, the ministry says it will launch full scale investigations to bust the syndicate and make those involved answerable for their fraudulent scheme and correct all the wrongs in the governance of the houses.
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In the past few months, Times uncovered the chaos regarding the occupation of the houses.
Among the revelations is that in some cases, tenants do not pay rentals at all.
In other cases, they pay as little as K200 per month to government officials who do not provide government receipts.
Now, we have further gathered that the chaos in the occupation of the houses comes in part from an era more than 30 years ago when the forestry department retired a number of civil servants based at the plantations.
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Many of these retirees had children living with them at the time and when they were leaving, the children remained in the houses.
Some of these children are now adults who got employment at Raiply Malawi Limited and elsewhere. They are living in these government houses on no arrangement at all other than the affiliation of their parents with the Forestry Department.
There is no agreement whatsoever with the government for their occupation of the houses.
Fifty-six of those houses were allocated to Raiply Malawi Limited which manages part of the plantation under a concession.
But the company’s spokesperson Dalitso Chimwala said there is no agreement with the government on this housing issue.
“We do not have any official agreement with the Department of Forestry on housing issues. The issue of Raiply formalising accommodation arrangements with the government died,” Chimwala said.
In a report by its Principal Secretary responsible for Administration James Ali, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change admits that there is total disorder in the management of the houses.
According to the report, the plantations division has a total of 347 institutional houses. They are managed by the Deputy Director of Forestry who is also called plantations manager.
The report says to ensure smooth allocation and management of the houses in Viphya, the plantation manager then instituted a housing committee in the early 1990s to take care of all affairs related to housing.
But the committee is dead.
According to report, Viphya plantations allocated the houses to various organisations such as Department of Forestry, Malawi Police Service, Raiply Malawi Limited, Ministry of Education, the business community, Admarc, the Ministry of Agriculture, Consolidated Processing Industries, Red Cross and Department of Social Welfare, among others.
“All these occupy the houses without any signed housing agreements and without any information reported to the Department of Forestry Headquarters,” reads the report dated June 19, 2023.
The report recommends a revamp of the housing committee of the plantations to be headed by an officer from the Department of Forestry at the headquarters.
It further calls for the forestry department headquarters to conduct an inventory of all government houses within the plantations to establish detailed data on the occupants of the houses.
“This should include tracking all payments that have been made whether to the government or individuals and to establish those who have accumulated debts due to non-payment of rentals to the government. The Department of Forestry headquarters with guidance from the ministry will take appropriate action (s) to recover the loss of revenue,” the report reads.
The ministry has also recommended that all occupants who are not paying their rentals to the government should be evicted.
Further, it has recommended that the forestry headquarters should draft housing agreements for vetting by the Judiciary prior to applying them for prospective tenants.
Principal Secretary for Natural Resources and Climate Change Yusuf Mkungula admitted yesterday that there are allegations of a syndicate of senior officials who have been defrauding the government.
He said he has already instituted a committee to investigate the matter within two weeks.
He could not explain why the ministry did not act after the death of the housing committee and why the ministry did not act on the absence of housing agreements as revealed in a report.
The matter came to light when Minister of Natural Resources and Climate Change Michael Usi toured the site last month.
In an interview, Usi said officials in the ministry have betrayed the trust the government had in them.
“This is a well-coordinated scheme. The officials who are supposed to be gate keepers have betrayed the trust the government had in them and they must go,” Usi said in an interview this week.
He said he will not allow the matter to be swept under the carpet or be bogged down by any delaying tactics.
Vice chairperson for the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Ned Poya said the committee would want to see the law taking its course on the officials involved in this scheme.
He said the committee has also planned to visit the plantations to conduct its own investigation.
