Admarc chief Ben Botolo caught in unreasonable daily MK135,000 accommodation

.…Does Ben Botolo own a house to be lodging at hotel for office work?

**BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-**At a time when ADMARC is telling Parliament that it needs K144 billion to operate, its chief executive is spending about MK135,000 a day on accommodation.

Over ten months, that works out at roughly K40 million.

That is enough money to buy a rather large pile of maize although, presumably, not enough to persuade the ADMARC chief executive to sleep in his office.

Ben Botolo, the former Treasury secretary appointed to head ADMARC in December, says the institutional house at Mudi residential estate in Blantyre is not fit for occupation and is being renovated.

When contacted, Botolo shared videos of the property with the Nation showing an old, unpainted house with peeling walls.

He said his predecessor, Daniel Makata, left the house in tatters in June.

Makata disputes this, saying he vacated the house in February, although his contract ended in June.

Whatever the disagreement over who left what behind, the result is the same: the ADMARC chief executive has been living in lodges.

Botolo says he has deliberately avoided hotels because lodges are cheaper, costing him about K135,000 a day.

“I am not staying in the hotel. I have been staying in Lilongwe working at Malangalanga and I come here to finalise payments such as salaries, etc. While I am here I stay in lodges,” he said.

There is, however, another question that comes with this explanation.

If the work requires the CEO to move between Blantyre and Lilongwe to approve salaries and attend to administrative matters, why does the work necessarily require the CEO to move at all?

President Peter Mutharika has been encouraging Malawians and public institutions to embrace digital tools.

In the digital age, a salary approval does not necessarily need a car, a road trip and a lodge at the other end.

It can, in many cases, involve a computer, a secure connection and the rather less expensive act of clicking a button.

For a public institution asking for K144 billion to keep operating, such small distinctions can become rather large ones.

Botolo says he is conscious that his accommodation arrangements may attract criticism, but insists his priority is reviving ADMARC.

That may well be so.

But austerity has an awkward habit of becoming most visible when the bill is being paid by someone else.

A senior official in the Office of the President and Cabinet questioned why the CEO could not occupy the institutional house while renovations were taking place.

The official, who asked not to be named, said the circumstances called for restraint.

“We all want good things but this is not the right time to make demands. If the other CEO lived in there then it must be fit enough for anyone. This does not speak to the spirit of austerity measures,” the official said.

ADMARC’s financial position makes the issue more than a matter of where its chief executive sleeps.

The grain marketing parastatal told Parliament in March that it needs K144 billion to operate during the current financial year, at a time when Malawians are struggling due to high taxes.

Against that background, K135,000 a day is no longer simply a room rate.

It is a question of priorities.

Questionnaires sent to ADMARC board chairperson Grey Nyandule Phiri and Comptroller for Statutory Corporations Stuart Ligomeka seeking their comments had not received responses by publication time.

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