Proposed law to trim minister’s powers
Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has proposed several amendments to the Local Government Act, including one that will stop the minister from appointing district commissioners (DCs) and chief executive officers (CEOs) of local councils.
In Section 11, the Local Government Act empowers the minister to appoint CEOs in city, municipal and town councils and DCs in district councils.
However, the proposed amendments seek to empower councils to appoint the officials on recommendation from Local Government Service Commission (LGSC) and that the LGSC should be appointing all staff below the CEOs and DCs.
The proposed law also wants to remove powers of the minister to transfer CEOs and DCs.
Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development principal secretary II Dorothy Banda, in an interview yesterday, confirmed the proposed amendments.
She said: “The draft bill is at PS [principal secretaries] level. It will then go to Cabinet committee on legal affairs, then to full Cabinet before it is sent to Parliament for debate.”
According to the document titled Explanatory Report to the Enhanced Draft Harmonised Local Government (Amendment) Bill of 2015, the changes are necessary to ensure that the officers are accountable to councils.
Reads in part the report: “It has [also] been noted that the current position leads to the centralisation of administrative control over the activities of the councils contrary to the spirit of decentralisation by devolution.
“It has been further noted that since there are no checks and balances in the appointment of the officers by the minister, such appointment can be heavily politicised to the detriment of the councils’ operations.”
On the proposal to have staff below CEOs and DCs appointed by the commission, the report said studies have shown that powers granted to councils to appoint staff have been marred by unprofessionalism and nepotism.
Recently, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has been facing problems in transferring some DCs. For example, Chitipa acting DC Grace Chirwa refused to be transferred to Rumphi to take up a lower position and her counterpart in Nkhotakota, Felix Mkandawire, also refused to be transferred to the ministry headquarters.
In May this year, Machinga DC Reinghard Chavula also obtained a court order stopping her transfer to Blantyre District Council as human resource management officer.
Transfers of DCs have been a contentious issue in recent years with current Blantyre DC Charles Kalemba previously writing OPC complaining about his frequent transfers which, he argued, affected implementation of projects.
In November 2014, Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) principal secretary (administration) Clement Chinthu-Phiri conceded in an earlier interview with The Nation that frequent transfers of DCs were affecting stability of district council leadership.
