By Mercy Matonga:
Four months after workers at Malawi Institute of Education raised alarm over a potential abuse of a USAID-funded government project materials, three senior officials have been suspended.
Their suspension follows a forensic audit which the workers’ union at the institution had demanded.
In March this year, we reported about Malawi Institute of Education Workers Trade Union calling on the government to investigate the handling of materials from a collapsed USAID primary school reading project.
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The union raised suspicion with two warehouses at Liwonde in Machinga District which the workers’ body claimed were keeping stationery and other related materials from the project.
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That stationery, according to the union, belonged to the government, through the MIE, but those were ghost warehouses. They were not officially in the books of MIE as an institution but in the hands of some officials at the institution, the union alleged.
Recently, the MIE board called for an audit, whose findings have now led to the suspension of three officials in the finance and curriculum department.
“Management wishes to inform all members of staff that, at its meeting held on 16th June 2026, the Board of the Malawi Institute of Education directed that the following members of staff be suspended from duty with immediate effect following the forensic audit that was conducted by AM Global,” reads the circular dated June 17, 2026.
Malawi News has not seen the audit but one of those suspended confirmed it was in relation to the handling of the materials, although he said the suspension letter did not provide any further details.
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President of the Malawi Institute of Education Workers Trade Union, Chipiliro Chinthenga, said the handling of USAID project materials was the subject of the audit.
“At this stage, the union is closely monitoring the situation and has not yet issued an official reaction. However, we firmly believe that all parties involved must be held accountable in accordance with the Constitution of Malawi.
“We are fully satisfied with the actions taken thus far and wish to express our sincere appreciation to the MIE Board and the Principal Secretary for Education for their decisive intervention in this matter,” Chinthenga said.
In their March letter to Principal Secretary for Education Ken Ndala, the workers questioned how large quantities of government-owned paper linked to the project ended up being stored in private warehouses.
The union said following the termination of the project, significant quantities of printing materials were sent back to MIE from a printer in Blantyre.
The union said its internal investigations and monitoring uncovered a series of irregularities in the handling of the materials.
It claimed that the two warehouses at Liwonde were under the sole control of one of the three officers but without the knowledge of the MIE Stores Officer or other authorised personnel responsible for managing institutional assets.
The union further alleged that the officer owned the warehouses.
According to the union, MIE received an invoice for rentals of those ‘ghost’ warehouses.
It also raised the issue of “irregular labour costs”.
The union therefore called for, among other things, the commissioning of an independent forensic audit of all Upread project materials returned to MIE.
It also demanded an investigation into the alleged conflict of interest regarding the private rental of warehouses owned by an MIE officer and the suspension of any payment of invoices related to the Liwonde warehouses.
When we contacted him that time, MIE acting Executive Director Jennings Kayira dismissed the allegations contained in the letter as untrue and unfounded.
“There are speculations that some of the warehouses belong to one of the officers, and those are just unfounded allegations,” Kayira said.
Former MIE Executive Director Frank Mtemang’ombe said that due to limited storage space available at MIE at the time, a task team had recommended outsourcing storage temporarily until the materials could be fully transferred and stored under MIE care.
Warehouses within reasonable proximity to MIE, specifically in Zomba and Machinga, were identified for this purpose, he said.
“I do not know whether any MIE officer owns any warehouses. During the time I worked [there], I never came across any information suggesting anyone’s involvement in warehousing or property management,” Mtemang’ombe said.
With the support from USAID, government had been implementing Upread [Upper Primary Reading], a five-year project for the development of reading materials for upper primary section – Standards 5 to 8 – under Malawi’s National Reading Programme.
The project started in 2021 and was supposed to run up to June 2026.
The project followed another, also financed by the USAID, that produced teacher guides, supplementary readers and over 12 million books for Standard 1 to 4 learners.
The Upread project collapsed in July 2025 following the abrupt shut down of USAID last year.
