CSTU protests Assani’s remarks

The Civil Service Trade Union (CSTU) has asked officials close to investigations into the plunder of public resources at Capital Hill to avoid wholesale branding of all civil servants as thieves and looters.

CSTU’s remarks come in the wake of a declaration from newly appointed Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Fahad Assani that 90 percent of houses civil servants owned in upmarket residential estates such as Area 43 and new Area 49 in Lilongwe were acquired with proceeds from cash-gate and would be the subject of investigations.

In an interview yesterday, CSTU president Elia Kamphinda Banda dismissed the assertion, observing that it implied that civil servants would not afford decent housing.

He said: “The statement may also mean that civil servants must be in poorly built houses. The statement may imply that there is a law in Malawi that stipulates what type of a house a civil servant can build.”

Kamphinda Banda said in the past, civil servants were beneficiaries of a housing scheme through the State-owned parastatal, the Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) which allowed many of them to buy houses from MHC. He said such houses could not be repossessed simply because civil servants owned them.

He said institutions such as the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) should concentrate on investigations of people who are alleged to have siphoned money through loopholes in the government accounting software, the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis).

However, Kamphinda Banda said this should not mean that those civil servants who are proven to have acquired houses or land through false documents or corruptly should not be prosecuted.

Since the Malawi Police Service (MPS) and ACB started picking up civil servants for being found with unexplained amounts of cash in their homes and vehicles, investigations have found that the officers owned plush homes, yet they had no corresponding source of income.

Assani told Parliament that some civil servants had no mortgages with commercial banks or private businesses which could finance construction or purchases of such houses.