The Vice President, Dr. Michael Usi, has requested the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change to provide a list of civil servants suspected of being involved in corruption within the ministry.
Usi made this call during the unveiling of the forest plantation fee structure report and public-private engagement in Lilongwe.
Usi stressed the importance of identifying officers responsible for deforestation in the country as a vital step in combating such practices.
The Principal Secretary, Yusuf Mkungula, disclosed that there are indeed government officials within the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change implicated in corruption cases.
Mkungula said limited resources allocated to the ministry for the management of the 88 planted forest reserves, is on major setback preventing the ministry from dealing with issues of deforestation.
However, Mkungula said the ministry of committed to implement government-directed strategies aimed at restoring the country’s forest reserves.
“The study has come at a right as the ministry is planning to restore about 4.5 million hectares by 2030, this is achievable as recommendations from the study done by Mwapata Institute gives directions on how we can move forward,” said Mkungula.
“We are going to conduct investigations on the issue of corruption among the suspects in the ministry before disclosing the names of corrupted civil servants,” added Mkungula.
Meanwhile, William Chadza, the Executive Director of the Mwapata Institute, said the report which has been presented will help in conducting a comparative analysis of pricing structures between Malawi and other countries.
According to Chadza, this analysis is intended to inform decision-making processes that will ultimately contribute to the social and economic development of the country. “From the study we have noted that the contribution of the forestry sector are specifically these planted forest to GDP remain very low as it is 0.1 percent to the definition of GDP but also they is low resource allocations among ministry of finance and Members of Parliament to ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change,” said Chadza.