By Sangwani Mabaso

Government through the Ministry of Civic Education and National Unity has said it is geared to build a corrupt-free country by putting Malawians in the fore front of the developmental activities.

According to the Minister responsible, Timothy Mtambo, the ministry is geared with new policies and procedures which have been aligned to fight corruption via civic educating the masses.

“The ministry has tabled procedures which will help citizens to play a big role of combating corruption in the country and that the citizens should own developmental agendas in order to build a new Malawi. We want Malawians to be vigilant on ensuring that there is accountability in various Government sectors,” he said during the launch of Malawi Citizen Chat Network on Sunday.

Mtambo further said the Ministry, through its new policies of Civic Education, is committed to eradicate corruption by putting in place policies that spearhead accountability to Malawians in the running of the country. Mtambo his ministry will soon be launching the government-citizens engagement forum call Pabwalo. The ultimate objective of the platform will be to promote transparency, accountability, dialogue and active citizenship.

“Malawians are supposed to own their development agendas so that they are able to competently question if nothing is being carried out on such agendas”, he said.

Mtambo added that the Ministry is exploring on the need to translate laws and critical policies into various local languages so that all Malawians including those that can’t understand English should understand and be able to follow operations in the running of the country.

“Malawians should be able to understand their own laws. We are governing Malawians, some of whom do not understand English hence the need for translation of laws into local languages so that they, too, should understand the affairs as they relate to the law”, he said.

“We are also trying our best, as a Ministry, to engage the Parliament to adopt the use of local languages as it is the master key for people in various constituencies to know if their members are indeed presenting what they were sent to present in the chamber or not,” he added.

The Ministry has since outlined various measures aimed for implementation so that Malawians are totally involved in the development agenda.

Mtambo also emphasized that education is key in transforming the society. His ministry is engaging the ministry of education to look into the curricular and introduce subjects which will promote mind set change of the citizens and promote the spirit of patriotism and nationalism such as Civics and Citizenship studies.