By Zenak Matekenya

Dedza, May 1, Mana: Dedza District Council Chief Agriculture Officer, Matilda Mtambo has expressed the council’s commitment to support Civil Society Agriculture Network’s (CISANET) project called Combating Corruption in the Affordable Input (AIP) Program.

She was speaking following CISANET’s presentation of the project to Dedza District Executive Committee on Wednesday.

“It is interesting to have a project by CISANET which is meant to end corruption in AIP. We are committed to work with them because we are one of the key stakeholders and as a council we strive to achieve the same goal.

“We are ready to provide information that they will need. Be it information for beneficiaries, our roles, stakeholders we are working with or any other information,” she said.

Civil Society Agriculture Network Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, Edwin Munthali said the project aims to bring to light corruption and any other malpractices on AIP.

He said the AIP gets a bigger chunk of funding in the Ministry of Agriculture but fails to produce desired results.

He decried poor harvest among beneficiary farming households associated with delayed delivery of inputs, missing identification, women getting abused and contractors’ failure to meet inputs supply contracts.

“We would like to understand the cause of all these. Any malpractices will be discussed at district and national level for a possible solution,” he said.

He mentioned the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Malawi Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture among key stakeholders.

He added that the project will work with the media to expose wrong doings and encourage communities to take to task duty bearers to achieve efficiency in the AIP implementation to promote food security.