Parliament has recommended that the position for Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC) should not serve as a substantive chairperson of a Board of a Statutory Corporation.

According to Public Appointments Committee of the House (PAC), a number of situations have shown that the SPC falls short of expectations due to conflict of interest.

Speaking in Parliament when presenting the Committee’s statement on its activities it carried between July 2020 and November 2021, PAC Chairperson Joyce Chitsulo said the House needs to amend relevant laws on the matter.

“We propose as a Committee that the Act be revised so that we live the SPC out of chairing boards, so that he concentrates on his job as head of the Public Service,” said Chitsulo.

“While the rest, let’s have people to chair the boards, in that way we will make it very easy and good for the SPC to oversee the parastatals and not like being the chair at the same time being the boss of the Civic Service.”

It was established during the Committee’s interactions with various stakeholders that Board Members for Statutory Corporations understood the chain of command as that they reported to the SPC.

However, the SPC chaired Boards of four State Owned Organisations, namely; EGENCO, Power Market Limited, NOCMA and Greenbelt Investment Limited.

According to PAC, the SPC should not be involved at operational level to avoid situations of conflict of interest between the SPC’s statutory functions as head of the Public Service and the other assigned duties as Board Chairperson of parastatals.

PAC believes that the country has an abundance of well qualified and competent Malawians that would ably chair Boards of parastatals under the general supervision of the SPC as Head of the Public Service.