The Office of the Ombudsman has given the National Assembly 30 days to formally apologise to the family of former Member of Parliament (MP) for Mangochi Central Constituency the late Mekki Mtewa for not being able to provide details of Mtewa’s pension almost 20 years after his death.
Mtewa was elected MP on May 18, 1999 and died in July 2003 before completing a full five-year term as a lawmaker.
And in 2005, his family, led by his nephew Yusuf Mtewa, sought the help of the Ombudsman after noticing that Parliament was not saying anything on the gratuity and pension of the late MP after repeated inquiries.
In 2019, the Office of the Ombudsman opened a new investigation into the matter.
According to a ruling signed by Ombudsman Grace Malera, Parliament through Jailosi Mkwezalamba, who was the human resources officer that time, provided documents showing that government and Parliament did not owe Mtewa anything.
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Mkwezalamba, now a policy and planning officer at the National Assembly, also stated that at the time of his death, Mtewa had outstanding loans with government and Parliament.
He further told the Office of the Ombudsman that after being elected MP, Mtewa was also appointed as cabinet Minister, which means that he was supposed be paying 25 percent of his salary as pension and he was further being deducted some money as a Cabinet minister towards the same.
By the time of his death, Mkwezalamba said, Mtewa had accumulated K104,633.25 as gratuity.
“However, upon checking records, the responded [Parliament] realised that the deceased had a loan with the National Assembly amounting to K56,345.17 and they deducted this loan from his gratuity and sent the balance to the treasury to give to the family,” the ruling reads.
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As a Cabinet minister, Mtewa also obtained some loans from treasury amounting to K1,639,000, meaning that the money which was sent to Treasury was also used to offset part of this loan without the family knowing about it.
Malera notes that Parliament failed to discharge its duties and kept the family for 20 years with expectations that they would receive money as death gratuity and pension for their departed relative.
We had not managed to get a comment from Parliament regarding the Ombudsman’s order which was authenticated by the office’s spokesperson Mandy Pondani.
Born on April 13, 1946 in Mangochi District, Mtewa obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration and Public Policy degree from the Claremont Graduate School in 1979.
He authored several books on politics, governance and democracy, among other areas.
Mtewa was once secretary general of the Alliance for Democracy and a Malawi Congress Party senior official before the return of multiparty politics in 1994.
