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Zaloumis dismisses Sata’s remarks on NCC allowances

Zaloumis dismisses Sata’s remarks on NCC allowances
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Saturday, July 18, 2009 9:32:18 PM

NATIONAL Constitutional Conference (NCC) spokesperson Mwangala Zaloumis has refuted allegations by Patriotic Front president Michael Sata that it has failed to pay its members their daily allowances for a period of two months. Reacting to the allegations by Sata, Zaloumis stated that it was not true that some members have not been paid their allowances for two months.

“It is not true that some members were not paid for two months when in fact NCC members had sat for less than two months from 5th May to 26th June 2009 in plenary sessions to deliberate and adopt its committees’ reports on the Mung’omba draft constitution and members were paid appropriate allowances every fortnight to cover subsistence, sitting and transport costs,” Zaloumis stated.

She stated that out of the NCC budgetary allocation of K50 billion for 2009, only K36 billion had been released so far while the balance of K14 billion was yet to be requested by the NCC secretariat as and when needed.

Zaloumis stated that the Ministry of Finance had been supportive in ensuring that timely releases of funds to the NCC secretariat were made to support administrative duties that included finances and payments.

Last week, NCC chairperson Chifumu Banda said that the NCC had made tremendous strides in constitution-making process and that some of its critics were now seeking to be associated with the success of the conference.

But Sata said Banda had given a wrong impression of the success scored by the conference when the NCC had allegedly failed to pay its members their daily allowances for two months.

Labels: MWANGALA ZALOUMIS, NCC, SATA

posted by MrK @ 8:32 PM