By Staff Reporter
In what could be the best example of defying Presidential directives, Anti Corruption Bureau director Martha Chizuma has chosen to leave the country for international duty without approval from her bosses.
She left Malawi on Friday for Vienna, Austria where she is attending the 13th Session of the United Nations Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on the Prevention of Corruption also called the “Working Group on Prevention” slated for June 15-17.
The defiant Chizuma has taken to the event three of ACB’s senior officials with whom she has skirted around the government procedure and a recent circular on foreign trips issued from the office of Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC).
The current SPC, Ms. Colleen Zamba and her predecessor, Zangazanga Chikhosi, have been reminding civil servants and all top government officials on the directive to have their travel arrangements vetted by the OPC.
Just last week Zamba sent a strong-worded circular to all government officials reminding them of this directive and asking everyone to abide by it fully.
However, Chizuma seems to have excluded herself from such an arrangement as she, together with her team, have proceeded on the Vienna trip without any regard to prevailing orders from above.
Her entourage from the ACB include Director of Investigations, Daniels Kelly Mponda, Director of Legal and Prosecutions, Chrispin Khunga and Legal Services Manager, Collins Chitsime.
Besides the ACB team other officials who were supposed to travel but are waiting for approval from Zamba’s office include Director of Public Prosecution Dr. Steven Kayuni, Daniel Daka who is Deputy Director of Tax Investigations at Malawi Revenue Authority, newly-appointed director general at Financial Intelligence Authority, Jean Phillipo, and legal counsel Edwin Mtonga.
Others also on the list are Mabvuto Katemula, First Secretary- Legal Affairs Permanent Mission of Malawi to the United Nations, and Dzkondianthu Malunda who is Senior Assistant Chief State Advocate.
As if traveling without approval is not enough sin, Chizuma has also chosen to travel business class against another order that demands government officials to travel economy class as a cost-cutting measure.
Government is in the process making sweeping reforms on expenditure to respond to economic uncertainties that have come about as effects of global events such as the war in Ukraine which has spiraled the costs of living upwards in all economies.
It is not yet known how Chizuma expects to defend herself from her delinquent conduct and similarly the nation will wait with abated breath to see how SPC Zamba will discipline of one the country’s most controversial public officers.
