Blantyre Mayor Ndipo applauds ICON Properties and Eris Properties commitment towards country’s development
Blantyre City Mayor, Councillor Wild Ndipo has applauded NICO Group Company for showing strong commitment by seriously taking part in supporting the country with various developmental initiatives which are crucial to the society.
Mayor Ndipo made the remarks during a special ‘Christmas Tree Lighting and Carols Ceremony’, organized by subsidiaries of NICO Group, ICON Properties and Eris Properties held on Sunday at Chichiri Shopping Mall in Blantyre.
Speaking at the event, which was aimed at celebrating the festive season, Ndipo applauded ICON Properties and Eris Properties for considering organizing such a colourful and memorable event, which he said is a sign that they value all their clients and Malawians at large.
He further added that NICO Group Plc, through all it’s subsidiaries, is doing tremendous contribution to the country’s development — particularly for championing the property development in the country.
“This event has shown the continued support towards the community by encouraging the celebration and commemoration of holidays,” the Mayor said.
“Christmas is a time to be merry as such I would like to applaud ICON Properties and Eris Properties for creating beautiful memories. This is what we want our local companies needs to emulating because NICO Group is a leading example in as far contributing to county’s development is concerned.”
In her remarks, ICON Properties and Eris Properties Chief Executive Officer, Ellen Chapinduka Nyasulu said they thought it wise to organize the event for the first time having realized that Christmas period is for celebrating, joy, togetherness as well as giving out to the people.
She said as a way of giving back to their patrons, such as shoppers, tenants and community at large, the event was meant to allow them all enjoy as they commemorate the festive of the year.
“As you know, our business is aimed at providing various accommodation services, like shops, offices just to mention a few and for us to work properly we depend on other feedback from our clients whom we meet in platforms like this,” she said.
During the event, ICON Properties and Eris Properties donated K500,000 to Enriching Lives Organization, which looks into providing meals for orphans, elderly and impaired people.
The ceremony was spiced up with live music performance from Joyful Souls and Praise Umali.
Meanwhile, ICON Properties Plc joined efforts from the private sector of improving school structures by investing K50 million for the construction of additional classroom at Mbayani Primary School in Blantyre.
Mbayani is the most congested primary school in Blantyre which has an enrolled of over 10,000 — thus ICON Properties coming in to support in order to reduce congestion in schools and make sure all pupils are accommodated in classrooms.
The school was first earmarked as needing support of additional school blocks by NICO Group, which pledged K140 million and at the time, the cost for putting up a double-storey block holding four classrooms was K100 million.
But due to devaluation, the costs increased to K190 million and there was need to source more funds to build the school block with NICO Group adding another K40 million to the pledge while ICON Properties has come in to fill the gap with the K50 million.
CEO Chapinduka-Nyasulu said they believe that the investment is within their values of being a responsible and responsive corporate citizen, especially in areas that require accommodation solutions — be it commercial or social.
“The funds will be deployed towards closing the gap that our mother company, NICO Group, identified in building additional school blocks for Mbayani Primary School — and we have joined efforts to ensure the project kicks off as planned.”
She also added that Mbayani is the most congested school in Malawi, “a development which has forced the school management to operate in shifts with the aim of accommodating all pupils”.
“So we felt it necessary to give our children a better learning environment because it is not proper for them to be learning in a congested rooms in this period where we are also observing some CoVID-19 measures.”
The groundbreaking ceremony for the construction will jointly be held by NICO Group and ICON Properties early next year.
ICON Properties Plc is a listed property investment company incorporated as part of a restructuring exercise by shareholders of various property holding companies.
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