Mayor for Mzuzu City Council on Wednesday prevented journalists from listening to the full council deliberations claiming that the meeting proceedings were confidential

According to the local government act in accordance with section 23 full council meetings are required to be open to the media and the public except for discussions on tender prices or personal conduct of an officer or council member.

Mzuzu city mayor Kondwani Nyasulu told YFM Online that he prevented the media from attending the deliberations to avoid leakage of information from the discussions

“We realised that there is just a lot of media leaking internal information to the public and we thought we should do the meeting by ourselves,” said Nyasulu.

Mzuzu Civil Society Network Secretary Wisdom Nyirenda condemned the development, describing it as unfortunate in terms of development and access to information.

“Its very unfortunate to witness this development and I think there are somethings which the council needs to clean up so that everyone should be able to attend these meeting,” said Nyirenda.