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‘No truancy on declaration of assets’

After a cabinet reshuffle in November activists blamed President Peter Mutharika for including Grace Chiumia among his ministers after it transpired that she had not fulfilled a constitutional obligation on declaration of assets. Our News Analyst Archibald Kasakura engages Assets Declarations Director Christopher Tukula on what his office is doing to ensure compliance. Excerpts:

Tukula: We will follow the law

There were media reports that some cabinet ministers and parliamentarians did not declare their assets this year. This is a constitutional obligation for public officers. What is the status as we close the year 2018?

Our position hasn’t changed. We made recommendations based on the law and we are expecting some action on the sanctions that the law, not Tukula, but the law, prescribes.

There have been a lot of talk on the kind of declarations that some public officers make which some sections of society feels is a mockery to the law such as a cabinet minister just declaring bags of maize. Does the law empower your office on compliance?

The law empowers us to verify the content of declarations and take people to task for misrepresenting to Malawians whom they serve. Before you can confront such people, you need to do your proper groundwork. As you can imagine, it is a colossal task because it is not a question of perception or assumptions. It is a matter of evidence. We are currently tracking some declarants over the accuracy of their declarations. Let us not pre-empt the findings.

Indeed, that must be a horrendous task but in the event that some officers made false declarations, what should the public expect to happen?

The law prescribes some sanctions. For failing to declare, it prescribes dismissal. For false declarations, it is criminal prosecution. If found guilty by a court of law, the punishment is two years imprisonment. We will make recommendations for the criminal prosecution of anyone who is found to have submitted false declarations as the law prescribes. That is what Malawians agreed when passing this law.

Would you at least give a pointer as to what you are looking at currently in the area of verifying declarations?

Yes, it’s very true and we are on the ground verifying and tracking these declarations. This may take time because it is a capital intensive exercise and requires specialist expertise like land economy surveyors, finance analysts and others, which currently we do not have in-house. We have to outsource some of the expertise. But we are moving steadily and will get there. Direction is more important than speed in these matters. Many thanks to Ministry of Finance, they are on course with their budgetary disbursements this financial year thereby enabling us to proceed with the verification exercise without cash related interruptions as was the case before.

Does it look like some senior officials are untouchable while those from lower ranks are easily pushed to comply with the dictates of the law?

On this one, I have to add that there are currently over 1 000 defaulters across the public service institutions and we do not want to set a precedent where lousy excuses end up undermining the letter and spirit of the law. It will be a sad day for this law and good governance in general if we end up with the unfair scenario where low ranking officers get penalised while the high ranking ones are protected for the same kind of non-compliance. Our hope is that there is enough political will to comply with the letter and spirit of this law. The Directorate alone cannot make this law effective. We need collaboration at all levels more especially at the political level.

In about five months, we will have elections and some of the current elected leaders will no longer be occupying their positions. Will this not be a missed opportunity if they go without fulfilling the constitutional obligation?

The fact that somebody has left office is irrelevant. Under the law, we are empowered to track anybody’s declarations up to seven years after they have vacated office and where criminal activity has been uncovered the process is timeless. Admittedly, we have human capacity challenges but fortunately DHRMD has given us a special approval to proceed with recruitment and we are in the process of recruiting more people. Where need be we are outsourcing the services. What is more important is to do a very excellent and professional service to Malawians no matter how long it takes. By the end of this financial year we will issue our first ever verification report. People should bear with us and understand that such a daunting task needed to be preceded by a lot of background work first.

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