The Ministry of Education says it needs more time to consolidate responses for 52 audit queries regarding secondary schools across the country.

According to Secretary for Education Chikondano Musa, the Ministry has a lot of audit queries that date back to 2017 and there is need for authorities to engage such schools to provide details about the needed documentation.

“Because we have a lot of audit queries dating back to 2017 and a lot of them require documents that have to be exhibited before the Committee to serve as evidence,” disclosed Musa.

Musa, who gave the request before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Lilongwe, said the Ministry will need a period of 15 days to source the required documents.

She said: “Because our schools are scattered far and wide, we are having to follow this evidence to all these schools requesting head teachers, principals and managers in education divisions to come with this documentation.

It’s quite a lot, we have to do a thorough job, I cannot come to present work which is incomplete before the honourable committee.”

Meanwhile, the Committee has reasoned with the Ministry on their request to extend time.

“These queries are covering the whole country from the secondary schools that are situated in different places across the country, so looking at their request, the Committee gave them that period of 15 days to consolidate the responses,” said Shadric Namalomba.