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| National |
| Government orders former district commissioner to pay K3.6 million |
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by
Joseph Langa, 24 November 2004
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09:09:48
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Local Government Finance Committee (LGFC) has written former Kasungu district commissioner Christopher Makileni, ordering him to pay K3.6 million ($33,333) which he is alleged to have authorised to fund activities outside assembly operations.
According to sources Makileni and the then director of finance, Geoffrey Yotamu, who is also implicated in the alleged scam have been given up to Friday November 26 to pay the money or face arrest.
LGFC has also written the assembly asking it to recover unquantified sums of money paid to some assembly staff and chiefs as allowances which the committee says are not justified.
LGFC executive secretary Kamia Kaluma confirmed that her office has asked the concerned officers, including Makileni and Yotamu, to account for the money by Friday.
But Kaluma could not say how much money is involved in the alleged scam, saying she needed to check in the audit report which she said was conducted by the auditor general’s office under the supervision of her office.
“We have asked them to account for the money. We hope that within that period they will come back to us,” she said.
Kasungu district commissioner Thomas Chirwa also confirmed to have received the two letters but declined to give more information, saying the committee was better placed to disclose that.
But Chirwa said one of the letters has warned that anyone who will not account for the money by Friday will be reported to the police.
Sources told Nation Online that the audit has showed that there were serious problems in the assembly’s accounting system that led to the loss of millions of money used to finance activities outside the assembly operations.
“Most of the money was used to finance UDF campaign activities during the elections. Most of it was used to pay for chiefs allowances and to buy fuel for the UDF officials,” said the source who still works for the assembly.
The source said the committee has asked Makileni to pay K847,754 he authorised to pay people outside the assembly, K73,064 he authorised to buy fuel for vehicles not belonging to the assembly and K111,250 which was used by himself.
The committee is also asking Makileni to pay K133,080 which was also used for fuel for non-government vehicles, K167,603 paid as allowances to people outside the assembly and 220 bags of cement worth over K200,000 among other finances.
Yotamu, is among other things, being asked to repay K133,080 and K33,000 he authorised as allowances to people outside the assembly.
Kamia said her office had not yet received any response as of yesterday from the concerned officers.
She couldn’t be drawn into confirming whether the two will be reported to the police after the deadline on Friday.
“We will pick it up from there. We have a committee which makes such decisions,” she said.
But she said the policy is that officers are surcharged if the money was paid wrongly or reported to the police if there is proof that it was done
fraudulently.
Efforts to speak to Makileni failed yesterday because his phone was out of reach and both local government, the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) and the district commissioner’s office could not trace his whereabouts.
The DC’s office said he was at OPC but the receptionist said he has names of the people working there but Makileni’s name was not appearing.
Yotamu was reported out of the office and his mobile phone was just calling.
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