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Meeting at Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture
On Wednesday, 5 April 2023, the Office of the Ombudsman held an engagement meeting with the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture to discuss preliminary findings of the ongoing systemic investigation into the implementation of the 2022/2023 Affordable Input Program (AIP).
Speaking during the meeting Honourable Ombudsman Grace Malera stressed the need for all relevant stakeholders to ensure that the K160 billion program benefits the intended beneficiaries. She said time has come for AIP to be people-centric by entrenching matters of ethics and integrity within the delivery system. According to Honourable Malera, the AIP requires serious reforms in order to address the challenges that continue to mar the program.
“As a country, we need a serious, frank, and candid conversation around the AIP. It is now clear that the program is failing to meet its intended objective of ensuring food security at household and national level,” Malera said.
The Honourable Ombudsman also decried state of preparedness for the AIP saying it is never on time despite Parliament reworking the country’s financial year to align it with the agricultural calendar.
Malera cited undersupplying of fertilizer, delayed opening of markets, restrictions of third purchases, poor preparations and poor identification of beneficiaries as some of the key challenges which marred the programme in the 2022/2023 season.
“Unfortunately there is no complaint redress mechanism where people would be able to report their grievances and get proper remedies,” she said.
The Honorable Ombudsman then questioned the involvement of MPs in the transportation of AIP fertilizer saying it posed a risk of politicization of the program, with certain areas being underserved.
“It turned out that naturally the MPs concentrated in their strongholds and we want this decision to be relooked into because clearly this is not the function of Members of Parliament,” Malera said.
On his part chairperson of the Agriculture Committee of Parliament Sameer Suleiman said the MPs only came in to save what he called a chaotic situation degenerating into a crisis.
“It was first of its kind for MPs to be directly involved in AIP logistics like that. We did not like it, and we do not want to repeat that,” he said. On how the decision was reached at, Suleiman’s deputy Ulemu Chilapondwa said there was no formal communication but they dived in after observing the transportation challenges.
MP for Mangochi South Constituency Lilian Patel said some of them felt that the AIP fertilizers were concentrated in one region and they had to be on the ground to ensure their constituencies were served as well.
“It was a bad experience that I would not want see it happening again,” MP for Chikwawa west Constituency, Susan Dossi corroborated Patel.
When asked for recommendations, Suleiman said in as much as the program is draining the tax payers’ resources and yet fails to deliver on its objectives, there is need for a systematic approach in phasing it out. While acknowledging that his committee has in recent years been sidelined in implementation of the program, Suleiman added that the Ministry of Agriculture should not be directly involved.
Suleiman instead suggested that the Smallholder Farmers Fertilizer Revolving Fund of Malawi (SFFRFM) and the Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) should be empowered and capacitated to deliver AIP.
Earlier in the day, Office of the Ombudsman officials shared findings and experiences from the monitoring investigation they conducted.
During the investigation, the officials met agriculture officials, SFFRFM personnel, community leaders and farmers themselves to get their experiences in the 2022/2023 season and suggestions for the next program. The systemic investigation into AIP is being conducted with financial support from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).
Source: The Office of the Ombudsman of the Republic of Malawi
