Africa-Press – Malawi. Parliament starts meeting today and, in this meeting, which is expected to end on August 12 2022, bills and ministerial statements will be tabled. Leader of the House Richard Chimwendo Banda told The Daily Times yesterday that a total of 16 bills would be deliberated upon during the meeting.
Out of them, 10 are legal bills while six are financial bills. The House is also expected to deliberate on ministerial statements. The ministerial statements are to do with national issues including food availability, availability of drugs, developments in the transport sector and other government projects.
“We are talking of quite a number of development issues that the government is doing,” Chimwendo Banda said.
Political analyst George Phiri expects the House to discuss outstanding issues such as the rising cost of goods due to fuel price hikes, shortage of medicine and shortage of food and foreign exchange.
He said public healthcare service facilities have no drugs, such that patients are sometimes given prescriptions to go and buy the drugs but fail due to lack of buying power.
“These are some of the issues Parliament needs to discuss conclusively and find solutions to,” he said. In March this year, Parliament passed the 2022- 23 National Budget pegged at K2.84 trillion.
Finance and Economic Development Minister Sosten Gwengwe said the Treasury would ensure that all ministries, departments and agencies implement their activities.
Nevertheless, Gwengwe was hopeful that the government would, through the Malawi Revenue Authority, manage to collect over K1.5 trillion. After passing the budget and deliberating on bills, Parliament rose on April 6 2022.
Mathews Kasanda is a journalist who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from University of Malawi (The Polytechnic). In 2015, Media Institute of Southern Africa awarded him the Best Print Media Education Journalist of the Year accolade. He joined Times Group Newsroom in September 2019.
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