Crisis as funding eludes MDAs, bills pile

Despite Parliament approving the K6 trillion 2024/25 National Budget, some government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are on the verge of collapse due to lack of funding that has crippled service delivery.

The Nation sampled several MDAs, including Independent Complaints Commission (ICC), Malawi Legal Aid Bureau, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Financial Intelligence Authority and Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) as well as local councils, some of which have not received funding for their other recurrent transactions (ORT) since the financial year rolled out on April 1 2024.

The Office of the Ombudsman, the Office of the Director of Public Officers Declarations as well as ministries of Water and Sanitation, Mining and Tourism have also not been spared the financial woes.

The MDAs we engaged said on paper they can see their allocations in the system, but they are unable to access the actual payments from the Accountant General’s Department.

In an interview yesterday ICC commissioner Christopher Tukula said since the beginning of the 2024/25 financial year on April 1, his office has not accessed any money from its K741 million budget allocation.

The commission was established in 2020 under Section 128 of the 2010 Police Act to receive and investigate complaints by the public against police officers and the Police Service, ensuring the security agency ’s accountability for its actions.

Tukula said the situation prompted the commission to suspend all its operations.

The suspended operations include investigation of complaints from members of the public against the police. Since ICC started, it has received 285 complaints of which, it has only concluded about 50.

He added that his institution owes suppliers of goods and services “huge sums of money”, but could not disclose the amounts.

Said Tukula: “At the beginning of the financial year, we were managing because we were getting goods and services on credit. But now, suppliers are no longer supplying and we are now grounded.

“We are in a total dysfunctional situation. If you go to the office of the Accountant General, you will find piles of unpaid payments from across government system.”

Legal Aid Bureau chief Trouble Kalua said the funding crisis has crippled access to justice, particularly to the less privileged who cannot afford to hire private lawyers.

He said the bureau has four regional offices in Blantyre, Zomba Lilongwe and Mzuzu and that the first two offices are yet to access any payments since the beginning of the 2024/25 financial year.

On the other hand, he said the Lilongwe office has received 30 percent of the payments for the period April to August this year while Mzuzu office only received 10 percent of the funding for the same period.

Said Kalua: “There are a lot of adjournments and a lot of people complaining that matters are taking too long, but it is because we are not able to go before court or to prepare the necessary paperwork that is needed in court.”

MHRC executive secretary Habiba Osman acknowledged that her organisation is not spared and expressed worry that instead of fighting for people’s rights, the commission could turn into an instrument of violation of people’s lives.

She said MHRC owes suppliers “huge sums” of money, which in the end affect the suppliers’ operations.

In an interview on Tuesday, Minister of Tourism Vera Kumtukule admitted that insufficient and delayed funding is a challenge they have been trying to rectify for months now.

She said there have been disbursement hiccups from Treasury where, in most cases, it has taken too long for regional offices to start receiving funding for their operations.

“We get information from our regional offices. For example, if people do not have fuel, they cannot travel to inspect and facilitate processing of business licences,” said Kamtukule.

The funding challenges have not spared city and district councils with the Malawi Local Government Association (Malga) revealing that all councils have not received their July funding.

Treasury spokesperson Williams Banda said in a separate interview yesterday that they have been funding MDAs according to cash inflows.