By Vincent Gunde
A Malawi Congress Party (MCP) diehard of Mvera in Dowa district Mr. Rodgers Kamphangala, has accused Mega Farmers Association of criticizing Minister of Agriculture Roza Mbilizi for publicly naming loan defaulters in Parliament demanding compensation of K400 million from government and an apology from the minister.
Addressing the press in Lilongwe, President of the Association Vasco Madhlopa, said what the minister did by reading out the names of loan defaulters will further risk some individuals of financial exclusion as well as harming them in their every day life situations.
He faulted procedures that were followed when announcing defaulters names in Parliament as wrong calling for an open dialogue with government and the Malawi Agricultural Industrial Investment Corporation ( Maicc) for the matter to be put to rest amicably.
Kamphangala said mega farms have been reported in the media that they have K55 billion unpaid loans claiming that many beneficiaries who got the loans were not genuine farmers but vendors who sold the farm inputs for profit in the name of party loyalists.
The MCP diehard said he sees nothing wrong for Agriculture Minister to be reading names of loan defaulters in Parliament.
He said 71 percent of those who benefited from the loans were from central region, 14 percent in the northern region while those in the south had 6 percent.
The MCP diehard has reminded Mega farmers that the money they borrowed as loans from NEEF and other lending institutions, are purely taxpayers money demanding accountability and transparency,” he said.
Writing on his face book page, social commentator Stanley Onjezani Kenani, has concurred with Lawyer Alexious Kamangila, that one cannot borrow public funds and then demand privacy saying public money carries public obligations where transparency is not punishment, it is the price of access.
Kenani said what is striking the reaction is that the outrage seems directed less at the conduct itself than at the act of naming it, yet naming matters.
He said for a long time, these loans existed only as entries in files and numbers in spreadsheets saying when the minister read out the names, the abstraction acquired faces.
The social commentator said if that moment produced discomfort, it may be because it revealed something many suspected, that money meant for empowerment had quietly travelled to the already empowered.
” History shows that societies often punish the man who turns on the light more quickly than those who were working comfortably in the dark,” reads Kenani’s writings on the wall.
