Taskforce faults some clusters
Presidential Taskforce on Covid (PTC) members yesterday spent the whole day demanding explanations from clusters on how they spent the K6.2 billion tranche of Covid funds.
The Treasury disbursed the funds in August last year as the government intensified its coronavirus fightback efforts.
However, things did not go as planned for some clusters, after their members were sent back for failure to provide “important and very crucial’ information.
PTC co-Chairpeson Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said all clusters submitted reports to the taskforce and the Department of Disaster Management Affairs within 48 hours as specified by President Lazarus Chakwera, but some needed to bring additional information.
“We have sent back some of them because they did not have substance, they did not have the details we were looking for, they were empty.
“So, while we are engaging them, we turned back some clusters so that they do some work and bring them [reports] back to us before the end of today [Wednesday],” Chiponda said.
She said clusters that were sent back included the Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Education, Local Government and the Ministry of Defence.
The PTC members indicated that a comprehensive report on the expenditures would be submitted to the President, adding that “we want to give the President something with substance”.
On Tuesday, the taskforce received expenditure reports from, among others, the Ministry of Health, Communications, Malawi Prison Service, Malawi Defence Force and the Ministry of Local Government.
The development comes after Chakwera, on Sunday, directed that 13 Covid clusters account for money they received within 48 hours.
Mathews Kasanda is a journalist who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from University of Malawi (The Polytechnic).
In 2015, Media Institute of Southern Africa awarded him the Best Print Media Education Journalist of the Year accolade.
He joined Times Group Newsroom in September 2019.
