Pac Kenyan probe hits a snag
Public Accounts Committee (Pac) of Parliament Tuesday said Treasury is reluctant to fund its trip to Kenya to probe alleged fraud at the Malawi Embassy.
The committee’s Chairperson, Alekeni Menyani, said it was surprising that the same people who wanted the committee to help them in the probe are frustrating its plans to travel to Kenya.
“The committee needs resources to go to Kenya but we are meeting resistance, especially from the Office of Secretary to the Treasury to release the funds. It is actually surprising that while Chief Secretary to Government wants us to travel, Secretary to Treasury is not releasing the funds,” he said.
Menyani told The Daily Times in an earlier interview that his committee wanted to go to Kenya because it was not satisfied with what a controlling officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told them during a meeting.
But Secretary to Treasury, Ben Botolo, said he cannot fund the trip because there is no specific budget line for it.
“He is a Member of Parliament and he should tell me the budget line from which I should get the funds… Everyone cannot just be saying I want money and I give them,” Botolo said.
Menyani said that the committee is still in touch with people with information regarding the fraud in Kenya, saying if worse comes to the worst, they will get the information electronically.
“As a committee, we are still engaging stakeholders on the matter. Hopefully, we will go but if we don’t, we will get the information, through other information communications technologies,” he said.
The parliamentary committee has been pushing to go to Kenya to investigate fraud at the Malawi mission in Nairobi.
The Malawi Law Society in an interview last year said that although the law allows the committee to conduct such investigations, other institutions such as Fiscal Police and Anti-Corruption Bureau were better placed to conduct the investigations
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