Three journalists scooped the CoST Malawi 2014 Media Awards for reporting important issues on public infrastructure projects.

The journalists included Gabriel Kamlomo formerly from Blantyre News Papers Ltd who wrote a story titled ‘MK10 billion goes down the drain’; Martin Chiwanda from Malawi News Agency (Mana) with a story titled ‘4 million classroom blocks face demolishing’; and George Singini from Nation Publications Limited (NPL) author of ‘Karonga-Chitipa road completion by November’.

Northern Region Water Board and Southern Water Board were recipients of the CoST Malawi 2014 Procuring Entity Awards for achieving full disclosure compliance in the recent CoST Malawi assurance process. The assurance report also highlighted the low levels of disclosure by the Malawi Roads Authority and the Malawi Housing Cooperation.

The low level of disclosure by Malawi Housing Cooperation was due to the high level of involvement of Chinese construction companies with many relevant documents are written in Chinese. In these cases, important information could not be extracted by the Assurance team and so remains undisclosed.

Chief Executive Officer for the CoST Malawi host, the National Construction Industry Council, Linda Phiri presented the awards at a- one-day assurance report disclosure workshop organised by the Multi-Stakeholders Group (MSG).

“We have awarded these journalists as they raised important issues on public infrastructure projects which the public has the right to be informed about,” said Phiri.

She went on to say, ‘the MSG also believed that it was important to recognise those procuring entities who are complying with the highest standards of transparency. We hope that this will provide an incentive to those procuring entities that need to improve their level of transparency.’