Vice President Saulos Chilima and his cronies have gone for a free-for-all abuse of office at Public Sector Reforms, latest being the purchase of a vehicle which was later surrendered to his UTM party for use to run daily errands.
Chilima has headed the Public Sector Reforms for almost five years now, three of those under Peter Mutharika and the other two under President Lazarus Chakwera since 2020.
We can reveal that last month the office bought a vehicle, a Nissan Navara, engine number YD 2596692BT, and chassis number AD2CCND23Z0001902 at the price of MK48, 954,000.00 and donated it straightaway to UTM.
The vehicle was bought from Imperial Motors in Lilongwe immediately after it was paid for by Public Sector Reforms office. It is now being used by Felix Njawala who is UTM’s Presidential Campaign Chairman.
Sources at Public Sector Reforms say they are equally surprised why a party official has a vehicle assigned to him when it is common knowledge that this is contrary to corporate governance basics.
“Njawala is not a public servant and cannot benefit from assets meant to run errands here. Evrything about it is wrong.”
Njawala is responsible for strategizing and organizing Chilima’s campaign, by among other things, organizing his public rallies. He is the one who has been mobilizing UTM followers that are currently seen trailing Chilima around the country as he has been campaigning under the guise of inspecting reform projects.
This is just one of the string of abuses that are going on at the Public Sector Reform Office under the watch of Chilima, many of which involve the siphoning of public funds towards funding UTM activities.
A few weeks ago, it was also revealed that Chilima has bought 200 vehicles and over 500 motor cycles using money that he is corruptly milking from cooking oil manufacturers as well various contractors to enrich himself.