Parliament stops study allowances

The Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) has directed deputy clerk of Parliament responsible for corporate services Renard Mapemba to stop using government money to pay for his Scotland study costs.

In addition, the commission has ordered Mapemba to repay about K10 million (US$25 000) allowances he collected between September 2012 and March 2013 for his travel and stay in Scotland in pursuit of his five-year part-time PhD programme at University of Glasgow.

The directive follows Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) query to Parliament on why the institution allowed Mapemba to use public money for his studies, when the study approval was granted to Mapemba on condition that no government funds would be used towards the trip.

But The Nation investigation into the matter revealed that Parliament was fully sponsoring the deputy clerk and further exposed how the National Assembly let Mapemba pocket the K10 million in allowances.

After about five months of pursuing Parliament to say something on the allowance scandal, the chief public relations officer Leonard Mengezi said there is a budget line in the vote of the National Assembly that is used to train its staff.

Said Mengezi: “The Parliamentary Service Commission has directed that Mr. Mapemba should not use government resources for his studies and the resources that he used earlier are being recovered from his salary. The recovery is being done due to the fact that he did not attend certain periods of the studies.”

Mengezi said the commission has re-constituted the training committee by including two of its members who would be co-chairing to ensure accountability and transparency in the processes of offering training to staff.

“This has been done to ensure that all processes and procedures on training matters for the National Assembly staff are adhered to and accountability as well as transparency of public resources is strictly followed. Previously, the Training Committee was composed of staff only,” he said.

“As a matter of clarity, the National Assembly does not have a scholarship scheme for its staff. There is a budget line in the vote of the National Assembly that is used to train its staff,” he said.

On its part, the Anti-Corruption Bureau says its investigations, which initially centred on Mapemba, has now been extended to the entire educational allowance system at Parliament.

ACB senior public relations officer Egrita Ndala said the probe into the Parliament education allowances has delayed because the Capital Hill looting scandal has overwhelmed the human and material resources of the graft bursting body.

Said Ndala: “The investigations at Parliament are ongoing and have extended beyond Mr Mapemba. The public will be informed once the investigations are completed.”

“As these investigations are being carried out side by side with those relating to the Capital Hill Cashgate crisis, the bureau is having to contend with human and material resource challenges.”

Justice Link executive director Justin Dzonzi said it would be important for Parliament to follow the rule of the law on how to deal with the conduct of Mapemba.

Dzonzi said if the conduct of Mapemba was unlawful, unless the enabling law provides for a refund as a punishment, Parliament could not improvise the appropriate punishment.

“It would actually be unlawful for Parliament to propose a course of conduct which is contrary to the letter of the law. It could therefore be that the question is not whether or not asking for a refund is enough, but whether or not that is what the law says,” said Dzonzi.

According to payment vouchers we saw in April, during his first visit to the university between September 13 2012 and October 14, at least K4 334 756.31 was deposited into Mapemba’s bank account held at Standard Bank Capital City Branch being payment for external travel and other allowances.

An internal memorandum reference number NA/SPF/446 dated August 15 2012 signed by Harvey Chigumula of the Travel Desk, explains that the money was meant for external travel allowances, telephone allowances, settling allowance, warm clothing allowance and book allowance.

Then in February this year, K5 388 093.90 was also deposited into Mapemba’s account being payment for external travel allowance for 30 days at $420 per day and telephone allowance for the same period at $70 per day.

On this second occasion, we established that even after pocketing the money, Mapemba did not travel to Scotland as scheduled to present his six-month research work. He was supposed to be at his university from March 25 to April 19 2013.

At the time of publishing the article in April, we talked to Mapemba and he confirmed that he had not travelled.

Mapemba declined to comment when asked why he was collecting wrong allowances and also why he never travelled after drawing allowances in February.