National News

Assets office struggles to enforce compliance

The Office of Public Officers’ Declaration of Assets has conceded that it is struggling to enforce full compliance of the assets declaration law due to lack of enforcement authority.

In a written response to a questionnaire, the office’s director Michael Chiusiwa said the law only allows them to recommend for dismissal of public officers, who do not comply with the law.

He said the dependency on others to enforce the law is one of the major setbacks as the directorate has no mandate to force ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to implement recommendations.

Chiusiwa: We can only recommend

Said Chiusiwa: “As a directorate, we have been recommending for dismissal of some public officers who contravened this law before by not submitting without reasonable cause.

“Our mandate, as per the current scheme of the law, ends at making recommendations to relevant authorities to dismiss or fire those that have failed to file declarations without reasonable excuse.”

He said their hope lies in the fact that the law is currently under review by a Special Law Commission.

One of the issues the review is looking into is strengthening the capacity of the directorate to be able to enforce the law on its own without depending on third parties.

The development comes against a background of Speaker of Parliament Catherine Gotani Hara facing accusations that she is failing to invoke the law and declare vacant seats of some members of Parliament who, without reasonable cause, have not declared their assets.

Chiusiwa said compliance rate in terms of declaration of assets among targeted public officers was about 80 percent and this is due to increased awareness.

He said compliance in terms of submission has been encouraging among political category as compared to the other categories classified as “senior public officers” and “other officers”.

Chiusiwa said: “Our experience shows that political and elected leaders consider submission of declarations more seriously than civil servants. There is general apathy and indifference among civil servants regarding the declarations regime. It would appear that civil servants think that they can abide by this law by choice, not as their legal obligation.”

In the proposed law, the directorate expects inclusion of a provision which allows online declaration system for efficiency and effectiveness.

Speaking on Wednesday in Lilongwe when he presided over the launch of an inter-agency data and information sharing workshop organised by the directorate, Minister of Justice Titus Mvalo also conceded that there is need to address weaknesses in the assets declaration law which makes enforcing a huge challenge.

He further said the government will take lifestyle audits seriously as one way to identify and deal with corruption which is rampant in the country.

On his part, governance commentator Willy Kambwandira said Malawi has a law which is very clear in terms of what should happen when a public officer fails to declare assets without reasonable justification.

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