The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) has invoked the Access to Information Law to demand the Office of the President and Cabinet to release the public sector reforms report in 15 days.
The report was presented to President Lazarus Chakwera on May 21, 2021 by Vice President Saulos Chilima.
When he was instituting a team to come up with the report, Chakwera promised Malawians that he would make the report public but later developed cold feet after it was presented to him.
CHRR’s letter addressed to the OPC is dated September 21, 2023 and signed by the organisation’s executive director Michael Kaiyatsa. OPC chief communications officer Robert Kalindiza acknowledged receipt of the letter.
“I can confirm receiving the letter and processes are under way to assist Centre Human Rights and Rehabilitation accordingly,” Kalindiza said.
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Public interest
In the letter, Kaiyatsa said his organisation and the public are still interested to find out the contents of the report in the interest of transparency and accountability about the government system.
“As a human rights and governance organisation, we are interested in obtaining this report to appreciate the outcomes of the task that was assigned to the Vice President and the Public Sector Systems Review Taskforce on 14 February, 2020 during President Chakwera’s weekly National Address on the War on Covid-19 in which the President bemoaned lack of accountability and abuse of public funds meant for the fight against the pandemic which impacted Covid-19 response efforts and service delivery. This remains an issue of public interest,” reads the letter.
The letter adds: “In addition, access to this report will allow us to better understand the issues that were identified, the gaps in our public system that necessitated such issues, and recommendations made to ensure transparency and accountability in government activities and public service delivery.
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“This will help inform us to effectively and meaningfully support the work of the government in monitoring public systems and service delivery to ensure that the rights and interests of Malawians are promoted and protected in accordance with the laws.”
In an interview yesterday, Kaiyatsa added that CHRR wants the report so that it is able to hold the President and his administration to account.
He said: “During the launch of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan, the President claimed that his administration is already implementing the recommendations of the report.
“However, it is impossible to know if that is indeed happening when we have not seen the report.
“Public officials, including the President, hold information not for themselves but for the public, and so it is important that as taxpayers we should have access to that report.”
Failed previous attempts
He said by invoking the Access to Information Act, the organisation has done everything it could to get the report, but all previous attempts have failed.
“In addition, this request is made in accordance with section 12 of the Constitution of Malawi that provides for constitutional principles including that, (a) “all legal and political authority of the State derives from the people of Malawi and shall be exercised in accordance with this Constitution solely to serve and protect their interests,” reads the letter.
15 days requirement
And Kaiyatsa reminds OPC that under the Access to Information Act, a response is expected within 15 days after receiving the request.
“I understand that under the Access to Information Act, we are entitled to receive a response to this request within 15 days.
“If for any reason you are unable to fulfil this request within this timeframe, please inform me in writing of the reasons for the delay and provide a reasonable estimated date by which I can expect to receive the requested information,” the letter reads.
Previous calls
Political parties and several organisations have been pressing for the report but to no avail.
In June this year, one of the Alliance partners, Petra President Kamuzu Chibambo demanded Chakwera to release the report arguing that the reforms exercise was carried out using taxpayers’ money and as such Malawians deserved to know the findings.
“If there are any recommendations, people would be wondering why a good recommendation is not being adopted. We would like to appeal to the President to rescind the decision to not share the report. A recommendation is a recommendation, there is no need to hide,” Chibambo said.
In May this year, public planning and international policy expert George Chaima said the secrecy surrounding the report raises speculation on its content.
“I assume that this report contains a lot of areas which benefit the local people but put politicians in a tight corner. Because of this, they have decided to sit on it, which is very unfortunate,” he said, adding that failure to release the report has provided special motivation to public officers that they can misuse public resources willy-nilly through bad procurements, corruption and other forms of public finance mismanagement.
The Episcopal Conference of Malawi also through their October 10, 2022 pastoral statement, asked the President to ensure that the public sector systems review taskforce report is made public and acted upon without further delay.
