Revenue scam rocks LCC, councillors claim

A K50 from market fees tucked away in a bag, then a K100 placed there—take them together across councils, they could constitute the greatest fiscal scam Malawi has ever witnessed.

While the nation is fixated on the mostly Capital Hill centric Cashgate that has pilfered hundreds of billions of kwacha over the past 10 years, a report by a committee of Lilongwe City Council (LCC) fathers claim that up to 90 percent of the council’s revenue collected, specifically in market fees, end up in private pockets.

The report, based on visits to 10 markets between January 28 and 29 around the capital city, said the council only got 10 percent for which receipts were issued.

The Human Resource Committee of the council, which undertook the exercise, has since demanded records of the revenue collection to ascertain the loss the council has suffered through lack of accountability by workers.

Committee chairperson Desmond Bikoko, who is also councillor for Chigoneka Ward, said in an interview on Tuesday that following their investigation, the committee gave LCC management seven days which elapsed today (March 11 2015) to produce records of revenue collection in the city.

He said: “Based on these investigations, we have asked to see records of the revenue collection these past years and once the seven days have elapsed and there is no action, we will go to court to force them to give us those records.”

The councillors undertook the field visit to appreciate the work of the council employees in the markets.

“Within 15 minutes of our arrival, our team collected 90 percent more revenue than what revenue collectors bring on daily basis. This collected [revenue] was exclusively from vegetable sellers,” reads in part the committee’s letter to the LCC chief executive officer Richard Hara dated February 21 2015.

The committee also said it found rampant absenteeism as a result of poorly managed attendance registers which are sometimes kept at the homes of supervisors.

“In Area 18, the committee did not find workers and the team waited for two hours [10am to noon] for the first employee to show up. In some markets for instance, we did not find workers at all as they had knocked off by 11am,” the report reads.

The inspection by the councillors was not well received in the markets as some council workers gave the committee false names when they queried the absence of records to show how much has been collected in market fees.

Following the report, the committee asked to meet departmental directors separately, then the rest of   city council employees, but this has not happened to date.

Reacting to the findings, Hara said a good part of the report was generalisations not supported by evidence to enable the council take legal action against the perpetrators.

“We will advise the committee on how to go about it. Issues of audits and records of revenues can be dealt with by another committee in conjunction with the Directorate of Commerce,” he said.