Malawi Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ulemu Chilapondwa has claimed that looting of government resources did not start with the advent of multiparty but used to take place during the one-party government of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP).
Chilapondwa, who is son to a former MP and deputy speaker, claimed to have knowledge of former president Hastings Kamuzu Banda condemning corruption and theft by public officers.
His comments on Wednesday were in response to MCP’s statement made on Tuesday that Malawi had “the best and dedicated civil service in the whole African continent during the MCP regime.”
“If anyone says MCP is clean, that is not true. What Kamuzu Banda did was to encourage MPs to have estates and work to fend for themselves. To his dismay, some would own 12 to 15 instead of just two,” Chilapondwa said.
MCP did not, however, respond to this assertion.
In the MCP contribution, Lilongwe Msozi South parliamentarian Vitus Dzoole Mwale called for further investigations into the fire that gutted Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) House in Blantyre on October 19, saying it might have been an act of arson to deliberately destroy evidence.
“MCP used to construct permanent structures which to date have not caught fire. What actually happened at Escom, Government should tell us,” Dzoole Mwale said.
