Secretary to Treasury Joseph Mwanamveka has said over 95 percent of civil servants will on February 27 get their salaries through their respective commercial banks as salary pay-points. "Come February 27, everyone will be paid through the banks. We are working towards having a 100 percent target achievement but every system or project has its own flaws and we are working on that," Mwanamveka said in an interview.

 

He said a team from his ministry and the Accountant General, among other stakeholders, were meeting on Tuesday to see how the new system will work out. Mwanamveka had earlier told a local radio station only people with disabilities and those critically ill would be given more time and they would be paid in February by a team from the Treasury, Accountant General and the police. Mwanamveka said so far between 95 to 98 percent of the civil servants have opened their bank accounts and those without accounts would not get their February salary. The Economics Association of Malawi President Thomas Munthali has welcomed the new system, saying Malawi was : one of the few countries whose civil servants were getting hard cash from pay- points. Minister of Finance Ken Kandodo said in parliament that Malawi was probably the only country in the world where government was paying cash to civil servants as salaries. In the past years, millions of money from the Ministry of Education had been lost to theft, mostly at gun point. 

The Ministry of Finance has assured staff at the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) that they will no longer lose their jobs through the restructuring process the institution underwent now that the exercise is over. Deputy Minister Frazer Nihorya said at Songwe boarder in Karonga during his familiarisation tour of revenue collecting institutions in the northern region.