As Malawians grapple with economic hardships, their elected representatives in Parliament are increasingly turning more expensive to the taxpayer, we have established. We sent an Access to Information Request to Parliament demanding full details of the benefits. Parliament rejected our request for the details, arguing perks of members of Parliament are confidential.
So, we resorted to speaking with some staff within Parliament, Treasury and MPs themselves who corroborated our findings. Each lawmaker earns a basic salary of about K2.03 million per month. This is supplemented by a fuel allowance of K1.6 million, a house allowance of K580, 800, chauffeur and security allowances of K528,005 each and a utility allowance of K414,480.
Taken together, the monthly wage bill for MPs alone exceeds K1.2 billion— before factoring in additional costs linked to parliamentary sittings, committee work and travel. Also at the last sitting which ran from October 8 to December 5, each lawmaker received subsistence allowances of K120,000 per day. Over the five weeks during which they met, this translated into roughly K1.62 billion paid out to MPs in subsistence alone.
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We have also learnt that transport reimbursements further inflate costs. MPs are entitled to claim 60 percent of K3,500 per kilometre for return travel to their constituencies. For representatives from distant districts such as Chitipa—roughly 600 kilometres from Lilongwe—travel refunds for a single sitting can reach as much as K2.52 million. The National Assembly operates multiple standing and ad hoc committees, including high-profile ones such as the Public Accounts Committee and the Budget Committee.
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