Parliament probes nepotism allegations in civil service

The Public Appointments Committee (Pac) of Parliament Tuesday resumed the probe into the alleged nepotism in civil service, especially in Grades from P5 and above.

Pac summoned Department of Human Resource Management and Development (DHRMD) officers requesting information on who holds such positions, length of service and district of origin.

DHRMD Principal Secretary, Hillary Chimota, told the committee that in the civil service, the Northern Region has 21.9 percent holding positions from Grade 5 and above, Central Region (33 percent), Eastern Region (21 percent) and Southern Region (24.3 percent).

Chimota, in an interview, said from their database, issues of nepotism do not arise as alleged by the public.

“People were just speaking without evidence. We have provided the information to the commission and that is what is in the system,” he said.

The probe dates back to November 2019. Pac Chairperson, Collins Kajawa, said the issues include nepotism, lack of employment and wrong procedures of recruitment.

Kajawa said the committee observed that the issues of nepotism are not well pronounced in the information provided and hopes to clear the gaps when the two parties convene in another meeting.

“We want DHRMD to have a very good recruitment strategy that takes into account equity and abilities of people and number of students graduating from tertiary institutions every year. It is a country that belongs to all of us,” he said.

He said the whole idea is to come up with skills database for all Malawians to easily attend to human resource gaps in other fields of development.