MALAWI: Passports & more – 9th July 2024

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services announced that they would resume printing passports at their Blantyre Headquarters on Wednesday the 10th.

As we discussed in previous shows, the Department stopped printing passports in January because the passport-issuing system was hacked. They started printing passports in Lilongwe in March and said they would gradually resume their services in other districts.

As it stands, only the Immigration’s Lilongwe and Blantyre offices are printing passports. They are yet to announce when they will resume printing them in their Mangochi and Mzuzu offices.

In some unfortunate news, customers of the First Discount House (or FDH) Bank are still waiting to access the bank’s services after they were called off last week.

e upgrading their system from: 11:45

On Tuesday the 9th, they released another statement saying their system upgrade was successful, and that they were opening their channels gradually. They said their digital channels would be back online later in the day. However, their digital channels aren’t working yet.

According to a report by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee, 4.2 million people from fourteen of the country’s twenty-eight districts were at risk of hunger in June. This trend might continue until September twenty twenty-four. The report also said that in October, the number of food-insecure people might rise to 5.7 million, with an estimated 550 thousand people from urban areas.

The report attributed the statistics to last year’s drought and floods, which resulted in a food production drop of seventeen percent, that is from 3.5 million metric tonnes to 2.9 million metric tonnes.

In development news, locals can now get coal and coal supplies from Mozambique because Nacala Logistics - a local railway company - fixed the Balaka and Lilongwe rail, which also connects to Mozambique.

Nacala tested the route on Wednesday the 3rd and announced that they successfully delivered a batch of coal for Shayona Cement Limited from Kanengo Station in Lilongwe to Moatize in Mozambique.

Before this, people from the Central and Northern Regions and neighboring country Zambia had to travel to Liwonde district or Limbe city to receive or send their goods. The reconstruction of the railway will significantly lower local transport costs.

Mthunzi Funeral Services Limited also announced a new development but it was put into question.

On Friday the 5th, Mthunzi unveiled a state-of-the-art funeral center in Lilongwe. It includes an auditorium that can seat 250 people, a garden, and a mortuary.

Onesmus Karakadzai, the General Manager for Mthunzi, said the funeral center shows their commitment to delivering exceptional services, but comments under the Facebook post showed that people were taken aback, maybe because the new development goes against Malawians’ tradition of managing funerals on their own.

Moving on, over 184 thousand students are currently sitting for their Malawi School Certificate of Education examinations. The tests started on Tuesday the 2nd and will go on until Friday the 26th.

Angela Kashitigu, the Public Relations Officer for the Malawi National Examinations Board (or MANEB),said MANEB recruited the Malawi Police and Malawi Defense Force to help prevent the exams from leaking and other malpractices during the exam period.

Speaking of exams, there was a message circulating on several social media platforms saying that students need to resit for their ABMA exams, as there was an admin error.

However, on Friday the 5th, ABMA Education released a statement on Facebook saying the message is malicious and should be treated as spam and unofficial content.

There have not been any changes to AMBA Education’s exam timetable for any of their courses, unless your school told you otherwise.

Many from the Ngoni tribe in Dedza district celebrated Senior Chief Kachindamoto, who was awarded honorary doctorate degrees for her efforts in ending early marriages, and promoting education and women's rights.

On Monday the 8th, two Belgian universities - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and L’Université Catholique de Louvain – awarded the Senior Chief for championing women and children’s rights. She started her work in two thousand four after noticing that many children were dropping out of school to get married, or because they were pregnant.

Nearly 2,500 children went back to school due to her efforts.

Another three locals were also celebrated this week. Ramy Waheed, the General Manager of Amaryllis Hotels in Blantyre, was appointed as a Global Ambassador of the African Tourism Board, which is a pan-African organization that aims to promote tourism across the continent. The appointment letter was dated the 29th of June, but the local news only talked about it on Thursday the 4th of July.

Under his new role, Waheed is expected to enhance Africa's visibility and appeal as a premier travel destination.

Meanwhile, Dr. Khwima Nthara was appointed as the Country Manager for the World Bank Group in Papua New Guinea. He is the first Malawian to hold this position.

When interviewed by local media, Nthara said he joined the World Bank in two thousand five and served in multiple ranks before his latest appointment.

On the flip side, many mourned the death of Eveless Kayanula. She was a veteran broadcaster who worked with the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation for thirty-five years before she retired.

Local news said she died on the night of Friday the 5th but didn’t say how. Her friends, family, and members of the broadcasting community held a vigil in Kayanula’s home in Machinjiri in Blantyre to pay their last respects, before laying her to rest at Dowa, her home district,

And to close this edition with some lighter news, the Umtheto Cultural Festival will take place at the Mzimba Heritage Association from the 31st of July to the 3rd of August. King Misuzulu and Inkosi Ya Makhosi Mbelwa the 5th will host the festival at the Hora Heritage Center.

According to the poster, there will be traditional food and drinks and cultural dances at the event, which seeks to celebrate the Ngoni tribe and its culture.

You can check out the festival’s poster in our show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Pitani bwino!