Gotani Hara orders investigation into Budget Committee report

The speaker of Parliament Catherine Gotani Hara has ordered an investigation into a report by the Parliamentary Committee on Budget and Finance.

The development arrived at following widespread dissatisfaction from some members of the Committee saying that the final report presented in the House is not reflecting what members of the Committee discussed earlier.

According to one of the members of the Committee Ulemu Chilapondwa, the Committee’s chairperson Gladys Ganda has included her own issues not what the Committee discussed.

But reacting to the accusations, Ganda says she has just extracted what is in the report and add in some comments.

“That’s a speech that has just been extracted from the report because I have presented a full report to Parliament but I have just extracted a few things that I have highlighted,” Ganda said.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has described the 2020/2021 National Budget estimates as consumptive as opposed to developmental oriented.

In an interview, Joseph Mwanamvekha says the Budget is not meeting expectations of Malawians in accordance with promises of the Tonse Alliance government.

“This budget is indeed a sham as described by many stakeholders this is because most underlying assumptions will never hold considering the moment we are in,” Mwanamvekha said.

“You are aware that most of the promises that were made during the campaign are not appearing in the budget so to us we are describing that budget as breaking voter`s promises because what they have done is that they have broken all the promises that they made to Malawians.”