HRDC threatens demo: Challenges Malawi govt to clear rot at Lands Ministry, business monopoly by foreignors

The Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has challenged the Tonse government to address endemic problem of dubious sale and disposal of public land by senior officials at the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.

Addressing the media in Lilongwe on Friday morning, HRDC chairperson Gift Trapence said they have received overwhelming reports and cases about senior officials at the ministry selling lands without following procedures.

“Government must urgently address this problem or else we will go to the streets to demand justice in land administration. We want an action on these issues. We can’t just sit and watch as a few individuals ransack this nation,” said Trapence.

He expressed concern that the Tonse Alliance led  government has been very quick to demolish illegal structures of the indigenous small-scale business people, sparing investors of Asian origin who are equally erecting poor structures along the city streets.

“The Tonse government should not be seen to be punishing Malawians. They have to apply the law to everyone equally, including the Asians. We will continue engagingly the government on the matter. But if nothing changes, we will hesitate to mobilize the people to demonstrate. We are there to protect the interests of Malawians,” he warned.

He also claimed that the coalition has a list of names of the officials involved in the illegal changing of title deeds of land whose owners passed away.

Billy Mayaya, an HRDC executive member, alleged that the biggest winners of the dubious sale and disposal of public land are investors of Asian origin.

Mayaya warned that Malawians will soon find themselves being foreigners in their own land because of the actions of the unscrupulous officials in the civil service.

“Government must borrow a leaf from Zambia where they have information on all the public land. We must audit our land,” he said.

Another executive member of the coalition, Reverend MacDonald Sembereka, urged the Anti-Corruption Bureau to expedite cases bordering on land issues.

HRDC has since threatened to hold mass demonstrations if there will be inaction from government.