ESCOM Receives Five Transformers, More Electricity for the People & more –29th June 2023

Muli bwanji from BA! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 29th of June twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

Lilongwe is expected to have more access to electricity. On Tuesday the 27th, the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (or ESCOM) announced that they had received five transformers from the Japanese International Corporation Agency as part of the Lilongwe Sub-Stations Upgrade project.

George Matukuta, the Regional Manager for ESCOM, said the transformers will be installed at Kanengo Sub-Station while the other two will go to Lilongwe A Sub-Station. He did not say where the remaining ones will go.

Meanwhile, residents of Mulanje district weren’t so happy.

There were a series of robberies in Limbuli and Muloza Trading Centres. On Sunday the 25th, in one of the robberies a businessman was killed, and people are blaming Edson Nachuma, another business owner, for the series of robberies and the murder of the other businessman.

On Monday the 26th, an angry mob marched to Nachuma’s lodge, looted his property, and smashed cars belonging to his customers. After the police fired teargas at them, they then marched to Nachuma’s home, looted his property, and burned his house down.

Other social media posts suggest that Nachuma was simply a casualty in the residents’ demonstrations against the murder of the other businessman.

Employees of Tata Zambia Limited’s Malawi branch have threatened to go on strike if their management fails to address their demands—which include a salary increase and the recruitment of a new Human Resources Manager based in Malawi, as the current one lives in Zambia and only visits the Malawi branch once a year.

Local news said the employees brought these issues up to their management in twenty eighteen. They also involved the Ministry of Labor and the Human Rights Consultative Committee in their deliberations, but nothing was sorted out.

As such, on Tuesday the 20th, the workers told their management to meet their requirements within seven days or face industrial action.

In social media trends, the Times Higher Education released their inaugural Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings for twenty twenty-three. The Malawi University of Science and Technology (or MUST) - the only Malawian school that was featured - was ranked as the best university in Malawi, standing at position twenty-nine.

The news annoyed some graduates of other schools, especially alumni of the University of Malawi.

To add salt to the wound, MUST is just nine years old, while other universities are over four decades old.

Perhaps, this news will encourage secondary school students to study hard.

Form Four students started sitting for this year’s Malawi School Certificate of Education (or MSCE) examinations on Tuesday the 27th. Local media reported that over 160 thousand students are sitting for this year’s exams. If they have high grades, they will be placed into one of the country’s public universities—which have cheaper fees. The rest of the students have to apply to the country’s private universities and colleges, which are more expensive.

Mayamiko Chiwaya, the Public Relations Officer for the Malawi National Examinations Board, said no student was denied access to the exams for failing to pay their school or examination fees. He said the administration of the exams is going great.

However, on Thursday the 29th, local media revealed that teachers had flouted the examination regulations.

On Tuesday the 27th, the day the Agriculture exams were administered, Gift Maguza, a teacher at Finish Line Private Secondary School in Blantyre, took pictures of the Agriculture Practical exams and shared them with another teacher from the same school.

James Mbeta and Bright Kandoje, two other teachers from St. Joseph Catholic Private School in Chiradzulu, are on the run for sharing the Biology practical exams with a student.

All three teachers were charged with revealing the contents of national examinations.

The Ministry of Homeland Security is still repatriating refugees. On Tuesday the 26th, they announced that they had repatriated five warlords and that they are on the hunt for fifty-five others who are at large. They said fifty other refugees voluntarily accepted to be sent back home.

Happy Mkandawire, the Deputy Inspector responsible for the Relocation Exercise, disclosed that they relocated about two thousand refugees to Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa. However, he said that they have seized over one hundred shipping containers that were full of illegal items such as guns, machines for printing currency and huge sums of cash in both local and foreign currencies. They believe these belong to the refugees, but are yet to identify to whom they were being sent to. Mkandawire added that they identified 125 shipping containers being sent to different locations across Malawi.

The Department of Fisheries has been curbing illegal activities too.

According to Evance Mataka, the Fisheries Enforcement Officer for Nkhatabay district, numerous vendors have been complaining about a surge of illegal fishing nets in the area.

The Fisheries Conservation Act bans the use of monofilament nets in all water bodies because they do not decompose and pose a threat to aquatic life. If left in water, they keep catching and killing fish and other organisms. This leads to a decline in their population and a scarcity of food for locals.

On Monday the 26th, Mataka said they had confiscated about two hundred fishing nets in Tukombo, Kande, Chintheche and Nkhatabay Boma. He said they will continue to arrest both the sellers and users of the nets.

There was drama in the world of Gospel Music following news that one of the leading artists had quit the genre.

On Monday the 26th, Gospel artist Shammah Vocals shared on his Facebook page that he thought he wasn’t fit to be a Gospel Musician, and said he would not be active anymore.

His move was called into question, as the artist might have quit Gospel Music because of his recent sex scandals, which made his fanbase question his Christianity.

On the morning of Tuesday the 27th, the post was taken down.

On Wednesday the 28th, Shammah told local media that his Facebook page had been hacked and that he was not the one who had written the post about quitting music. However, his fans didn’t believe him and thought he was just trying to cover up his mess.

On Thursday the 29th, he released an official statement reiterating the same message that his account had been hacked but had now been recovered. Part of the statement read: “Please be aware that the posts made by the hackers do not reflect our views, values, or beliefs.”

He apologized for the inconvenience.

On more music news, music lovers are excited about the return of Trap artist Toast, who took a four-year break from music to focus on his studies. On Wednesday the 27th, Toast revealed that he had completed his studies and would be graduating this year.

In a short Facebook statement, Toast said he needed school to learn how to manage his brand in the corporate space so his career could grow. He said that, now that he is back, his new music will focus on brand growth and not just shows.

There is no word on when Toast will release new music.

Some locals will now be able to visit the bank on Sunday.

On Sunday the 25th, Centenary Bank released a statement on their Facebook page saying they had extended their banking hours and would be open on Sundays from 1 PM to 4 PM. This only applies to their Old Town branch in Lilongwe, and to customers who only want to do deposits.

Some people have assumed that, because Centenary is owned by the Roman Catholic Church, they want church leaders to deposit church offerings immediately after mass.

Malawi will be celebrating its 56th Independence Day next month, on Thursday the 6th.

On Thursday the 29th, the government disclosed that the cost for this year’s Independence celebrations are pegged at 320 million Kwacha, which is a little over three hundred thousand dollars.

Richard Chimwendo Banda, the Minister of Local Government, Unity, and Culture, said the funds for the celebrations were already allocated in the national budget. He said some of the activities on the day will include music concerts and a football match. He also said a president from another country might join the celebrations too.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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