Chakwera breaks own austerity rules

Despite the country’s economic woes worsening daily, President Lazarus Chakwera has broken his own austerity measures when he travelled to Egypt yesterday.

It was his fourth foreign trip despite committing to three in the second half of the year.

Chakwera flew out via Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe to Sharm El Sheikh in the North African nation to attend the 2022 Conference of Parties (CoP27).

His trip comes at a time the country is grappling with several crises, including fuel shortages that have forced motorists to sleep on queues at service stations.

In May this year, the President introduced a raft of measures to contain the economic decline and rule one restricts foreign trips of public officers including himself.

He said: “Public officers, including myself, who need to travel abroad for their work out of absolute necessity will only be allowed to take no more than three trips during the remainder of the year, unless in cases of unforeseen extreme emergency.”

Chakwera travelled to Zambia in August for the Kulamba ceremony, an annual traditional festival of the Chewa people. Later that month, he flew out to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Southern Africa Development Community Summit.

In September, he travelled to the United Nations General Assembly in the United States of America where he spent three weeks.

But the Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency (Csat) has said Chakwera’s action “confirms that the talk about austerity measures was only poetic and rhetoric with no matching actions”.

In a written response yesterday, Csat executive director Willy Kambwandira said the President has set a bad precedent by failing to follow his own rules.

He said: “When the President is breaking the rules set by himself; it does not give any confidence how serious we are about austerity measures, accountability and fighting corruption.

“In all truths, the austerity measures are just a mockery to Malawians and we may not be surprised to learn that government ministries, departments and agencies are not implementing them.”

Leader of opposition in Parliament Kondwani Nankhumwa has described the President as being insensitive by travelling to Egypt when the country is grappling with fuel shortages.

In his address in Lilongwe on Wednesday, Nankhumwa said the forex the President uses on foreign trips could help solve some of the challenges facing the country.

“I wish to urge the President to suspend presidential local and international trips as they are a huge drain on public resources both in forex and local currency,” he said.

However, Minister of Information and Digitisation Gospel Kazako defended the President’s decision to go beyond the foreign trips’ quota.

He said: “There have been so many trips the President didn’t undertake in order to comply with the set austerity measures.

“But within the measures, he made clear provisions to accommodate trips of extreme importance and of extreme national benefit.

“The Egypt trip is one of such trips. There is always an analysis of what his physical absence at certain meetings would make Malawi lose and how much his presence would benefit the country.

“In such situations, we are faced with difficult decisions that must be made. It’s all about getting solutions to our economic and other challenges.”

Speaking during his departure, Chakwera said he will lobby developed countries, who are major emitters of greenhouse gases, to honour their pledges in climate protection and nature restoration.

The austerity measures the President put in place included cutting by 20 percent fuel allowances for his Cabinet and restricting movement of government vehicles after 6pm.

He also constrained renewal of employment contracts in government parastatals.