IPPI key to corruption prevention in infrastructural projects implementation-NCIC

Malawi: The National Construction Industry Council of Malawi (NCIC) says the Information Platform for Public Infrastructure (IPPI) will help to prevent corruption in the implementation of infrastructure projects by Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) in the country.

NCIC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Engineer Gerald Khonje said this on Friday in Lilongwe, following the opening of an IPPI orientation session for MDAs organized by the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) Malawi and CoST Malawi, that IPPI would help to promote transparency in the implementation of infrastructure projects by MDAs in the country.

Khonje said: “Transparency is very important, when you are transparent and when you know you are going to be a subject to the public scrutiny already that is a deterrent to make sure that you are doing things rightly.

“In this case, the disclosure of how MDAs are implementing various infrastructural projects on IPPI will eliminate speculations and those that are doing unethical tendencies will be exposed as the public will able to check what they are doing on IPPI.”

He added that monitoring the implementation of infrastructure projects by MDAs on IPPI will assist the government in developing long-term infrastructure that will help boost the country's economy.

He also stated that NCIC, along with its partners such as CoST Malawi, will always assist in educating MDAs on how to upload information about the infrastructure projects that they are working on to IPPI.

In his comment, Multi-stakeholder Group (MSG)-CoST Malawi Chairperson Joel Ching'ani stated that all MDAs in the country are expected to upload the infrastructure work that is being implemented on IPPI.

“We expect all government institutions that are implementing infrastructural work to upload basic information that the stakeholders and the general public and interested agencies would want to access, this will help to make sure that they provide answers to unanswered questions that arise on infrastructural projects done by government,” Ching’ani explained.

According to him, another IPPI orientation session for MDAs will be held in Blantyre, Mzuzu, and Liwonde to ensure that all MDAs in the country are covered.

Delegates from various MDAs, including Lilongwe City Council (LCC) and Lilongwe Water Board, attended the orientation session in Lilongwe (LWB).

Dr. Lazarus Chakwera, President of Malawi and National Champion for CoST Malawi, has directed that all public entities managing infrastructure projects upload their respective project data to the IPPI platform by August 31st, 2022.