Poor Malawians who were expected to benefit from this year’s Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) have missed out, as government has not replaced the 20 000 names of civil servants, that were removed from the list.

Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale said last month that government will remove at least 20 000 names on the AIP list because they are for civil servants.

Farmers queue to access farm inputs at one of the outlets
during last season’s implementation

According to those civil servants appearing on the AIP list were mainly from ministries of Agriculture, Health, Education and police.

Ministry of Agriculture AIP coordinator Justin Kagona confirmed in an interview on Friday that there will be no replacement for new beneficiaries.

He was apologetic that the development means the number of AIP beneficiaries has been reduced further this year.

The targeted beneficiaries this farming season was 2.5 million.

Kagona said: “After the vetting exercise this year, we found that 15 659 civil servants were appearing on the list of beneficiaries.

“It looks an insignificant figure if you relate to the actual number of beneficiaries, but it’s a big number although it is lower than last year’s figure of 44 000.”

A letter from Principal Secretary for Agriculture, signed by engineer Charles Mamba who is director of irrigation services shows that 1 292 civil servants found their way to the list of beneficiaries for Mzuzu Agricultural  Development Division (ADD) alone.

Rumphi had 308 civil servants, Likoma had eight, Mzimba North had 422, Mzimba South had 319 and Nkhata Bay had 235.

Under Karonga ADD, covering Karonga and Chitipa districts, a total of 431 civil servants have been removed with Karonga having  231, while Chitipa had 200.

Under Kasungu ADD, which covers Kasungu, Dowa, Mchinji and Ntchisi districts, programmes manager Yusuf Shaibu said 2 600 civil servants were on the list, and were removed.

The database shows that the Lower Shire registered no civil servant on the list. All the 79 364 beneficiaries, 30 884 for Nsanje and 484 80 for Chikwawa, passed the verification test.

In an interview on Friday, Mzimba South director of agriculture, environment and natural resources Ezra Mbendera said they have not been told of replacements of the names  that have been removed.

“We are waiting for that so that we talk to agriculture extension development officers who were responsible for registration so that we find out what happened,” he said.

Rumphi director of agriculture, environment and natural resources Lumbani Msiska said they await the Ministry of Agriculture on what would happen to replace beneficiaries on the list.

However, he explained how names of civil servants found their way on the list, saying most of them work with communities such as teachers.

Msiska said: “During registration, we involve chiefs an village and area development committees. We were banking on these structures to identify their people.

“But sometimes chiefs would take these civil servants as their children, because of how they live with them in the community.”

Karonga director of agriculture, environment and natural resources Raphael Mkisi said they initially had 33 045 beneficiaries and most of the civil servants live within communities.

“It’s mostly health surveillance assistants and teachers, they live in communities, participate in development work and chiefs regard them as their children.

“We requested to replace the names but the ministry has told us that time is up and the system was closed since redeeming of the inputs has started,” he said.

M’mbelwa District Council chairperson Evance Ndhlovu has demanded replacement of the beneficiaries across the country.

“We need our people to be on that AIP list. So, let government do the needful, and must also institute disciplinary action against those who deliberately included non-eligible persons on the list,” he said.

In the 2022/23 National Budget, AIP was allocated K109.5 billion, representing 85 percent of the agriculture sector budget.

The allocation is a K33 billion decline from the previous year’s K142 billion.

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