•NAWAKWI
By FLAVIOR CHISHALA –
THE Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) has asked the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) to resume live coverage of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sittings on television.
The opposition party contends that the live coverage accords the people of Zambia an opportunity to see how taxpayers’ money is spent.
FDD president Edith Nawakwi said the live PAC proceedings were exposing erring public officials to the general public and raised people’s awareness in demanding for transparency and accountability.
Ms Nawakwi said yesterday that the proceedings also acted as a deterrent to would-be offenders.
She said in a statement that the PAC proceedings were not only giving the public an insight of why critical goods and services were not reaching them, but also worked as an effective mechanism for ensuring a corruption-free civil service.
She expressed sadness at the cancellation of live broadcasting by the national broadcaster and urged all well-meaning Zambians to join the FDD in lobbying Government to make funds available for the resumption of the live coverage of the PAC sittings.
Last week, ZNBC corporate affairs manager Masuzyo Ndhlovu said the airing of PAC proceedings was a pilot programme which was scheduled to run from February 20-26, 2014 but that the corporation had to source money for the programme to continue.
