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The presidential commission probing the management of the strategic grain reserves and whether former Finance Minister Friday Jumbe used public resources to construct his Superior Hotel in Blantyre will present its findings to President Bingu wa Mutharika on Tuesday.
Commission chair Khuze Kapeta confirmed on Monday the report was now ready and will be presented to Mutharika at his Lilongwe State Lodge at 10 AM. He declined to give hints regarding the commission’s findings.
“It is correct that the report is now ready. It is also correct that it will be presented to the President tomorrow at 10 AM in Lilongwe,” said Kapeta, a corporate lawyer. “I am not saying it is accurate or not, but we have done our job and I trust we have done it well.”
Kapeta said the President, whose office sanctioned the investigations some two years ago, reserved the privilege to be the first person, outside the commission, to look at its contents.
“There are so many things in it,” said Kapeta, whose commission was set up after allegations that mismanagement of the strategic grain reserves contributed to starvation the country experienced a couple of years ago, and financed construction of Superior Hotel in Blantyre.
Kapeta explained away suggestions that commission has delayed to come up with the report.
“We were not given a time limit. We were just given a job to do. In fact the commission did not set out to work immediately after it was appointed, and even during the course of our work, meetings, for example, could not take place sometimes due to members being committed with equally important matters,” said Kapeta.
Meanwhile, Parliament is sitting on a report on almost the same issue regarding the maize scandal that rocked the country some three years ago and implicated some government officials and politicians.
Former chair of the Agriculture Committee of Parliament Dzoole Mwale revealed last week his committee spent time to investigate the issue and compiled a report which was not tabled in the House.
A parliamentary source disclosed last week over K700,000 ($6,481) was spent to prepare the report now just gathering dust in one of the rooms at the Parliament building.
“We did a professional job on the issue, we compiled a report in which we made a number of recommendations following our findings,” said Mwale during a seminar taking stock of 10 years of the Malawi Parliament in Lilongwe.
“We however do not know why the business committee of the time thought the report did not merit tabling in the House,” he lamented. The business committee, chaired by the speaker with chief whips of parties as members, sets the agenda for a particular sitting of the House.
Former Speaker of the National Assembly Davis Katsonga could not be reached on Monday to explain why the committee he chaired did not have the report tabled in the house.
Mystery still surrounds the circumstances in which maize was sold off and exported to Kenya and Mozambique, and how government came into meet costs incurred by the National Food Reserve Agency regarding the issue.
Former Mwanza East MP Joe Manduwa (UDF) was removed as chair of the same committee by his party after it was discovered that he took personal responsibility by visiting some banks in the probe of the issue.
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