Malawi Watch accuses TEVETA of corruption

As TEVET continues to turn a blind eye on calls by general public to address a standing issue involving PACT College, in which it is alleged that PACT bribed Yusuf Alide with MK1.7 million to shut down other colleges and to let them operate on a primary school, Malawi Watch, a Non-governmental Organisation, has accused TEVETA of being “Incompetent and unlawful”.

In an interview with Malawi leading private radio TV, AFJ Television, Billy Banda who is the President of Malawi Watch said that TEVETA is an arm of the government which is supposed to execute its duties professionally and not to be involved in any kind of corruption as is the case with PACT.

“TEVETA is supposed to provide checks and balances within the education system thereby helping the government improve the education standards which have gone down and not favouring a particular college at the expense of the others. Let them come open to explain the truth as to why they allow some colleges to operate on public primary schools while others were chased from the same primary schools. Why they couldn’t give this same treatment of a grace period to other colleges,” wondered Banda.

In a separate interview with another interested party who is following the matter keenly but opted not to be mentioned, he commented that it would be very difficult for TEVETA to reopen the colleges which were closed because there would be a need for compensations as these colleges have by now suffered loss of income and also their goodwill has been damaged. The damages which TEVETA would be required to pay would be more than what TEVETA bosses collected inform of bribes.

“I The best thing is just to close those colleges which are operating in defiance of TEVETA boss’ order that no college will be allowed to operate at primary school come 2013.” He said.
Simbalashi Mungoshi, senior lecture at the Polytechnic had also pointed out that it is clear and straight forward from the way TEVETA is handling the issue of closure of colleges that it is involved in corruption.

“How can TEVETA close all other private colleges operating at primary schools but leave only one, PACT College? I think the other colleges also had good reasons to be left to enjoy public facilities,” said Mungoshi.

TEVETA is believed to have been asking for bribes from Colleges in order to let them operate even when they don’t meet the standards. PACT college happened to be one of the few that managed to pay about two million to TEVETA but failing to find suitable place where they can pay less than that and operate legally.