NGOCC executive director Engwase Mwale says government should put up accountability mechanisms to give comfort to members of the public that donations being made towards the fight against cholera are not misapplied.

In an interview with News Diggers, Mwale said the line ministries and the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit should preside over all the donations to ensure that funds are properly accounted for within the prescribed government institutional mechanisms.

Mwale noted that in the past, donations of that nature were managed by committees which were not clearly understood by the public.

“I think the issue of donation within a government system that has got institutional mechanisms must be handling all forms of donations in a very transparent manner, it is our expectation as NGOCC that the necessary government institutions, maybe the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) or any relevant ministry should actually be made to preside over all donations to ensure that they are properly accounted for within the prescribed government institutional mechanisms,” Mwale said.

“I think in the past, we have seen committees, we have seen donations that are going into bodies that are not clearly understood by the public.”

Mwale expressed concern that the cholera crisis and the donation had been made at a time when the country was overwhelmed with reports of corruption in the government system.

She noted that the public had lost confidence in the government’s ability to account for donated funds.

“So I think our expectations are that going forward, to deal with the corruption that we have been hearing about in 2017 but also deal with some of the public finance management accountability challenges that the country has reported, it is our expectation that this time around, the donations will be handled by relevant government agencies in order to provide comfort to the public that the monies are going towards addressing the [cholera] epidemic,” said Mwale.