PAC breathes fire

…takes Agriculture PS Sangowayo Zyambo to task for delaying to take action against civil servants who benefitted from FISP

THE Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday breathed fire on Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Sangowayo Zyambo for taking long to identify and take action against the 12, 561 civil servants who benefited from the Farmers Input Support Programme (FISP).

Solwezi West Member of Parliament Teddy Kasonso described the delay by the ministry to identify the culprits as an indication of indiscipline.

This was when Mr Zyambo gave a response to a query in the 2018 Auditor General’s Report regarding civil servants who benefited from FISP.

According to the report, 12,561 civil servants in 104 districts redeemed inputs in amounts totaling K25,122,000 from FISP for the farming season 2018/2019.

FISP requirement on selection of individual farmer beneficiaries states that a beneficiary shall not be a civil servant.

In his response, Mr. Zyambo told the committee that his ministry had instructed the Provincial Agricultural Coordinating Officers (PACOs) to start the process of identifying the officers concerned and charge them for failure to follow FISP guidelines.

But Mr Kasonso questioned why the identification process had taken long considering that the issue was a serious one. Meanwhile, Mr Zyambo said Smart Zambia has been requested to enhance the system in order to detect civil servants at registration stage.

“As soon as we got this information, we firstly embarked on prevention of civil servants coming on the system, because it is very difficult for camp officers in rural areas to identify who is a civil servant and who is not,” he said.