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.
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The problem of land corruption in the country is shameful..Take the case out of Nkhata Bay in which a serious investor a black American man was mislead and taken advantage of by the Ministry of Lands, Nkhata Bay and Mzuzu…The Tonse Government is yet to make arrests although the District Commissioner for Nkhata Bay at the time of the case was condemned by the High Court in the judgment from the court along with the Defendant for attempted theft of the american Investors business property. That’s obvious arrests, it’s written in the High Court judgment. The american waited 5 years… Read more »
I suggest that all foreigners should not be allowed to buy land in our country.
Madam deputy minister promised to clean up. But instead is working hard to get in good books with amenyes.
You follow money trail you moron!!! What do you have church rat!!
Cholinga tiziti mulipo??? Mbuzi
Just give us the deadline. Tikawongole miyendo ndikutsukuluza mkamwa. It’s not even about Tonse government or any political party. Malawians need to realise that it’s about the citizenry and all those taking us for a ride regardless of who they be.
Imagine City of Blantyre, selling allocated Church Plot, to an Asian Business man
in Mpingwe/Namatapa. City of Blantyre is rotten to the core, need to drain the swamp at City of Blantyre
Yah on land matters the Tonse administration need to take seriously this issue coz land is being sold dubiously to these mwenyes and Malawians are suffering in their own God given land.
Let’s learn from our neighbours such as Zimbabwe on land issue, it has let Robert Mugabe to take revot against white minority to acquire land for his people .
Admarc land ndi mitengo ya bluegum inagulitsa Fumu ya mu Geisha ifufuzidwe nayoso walemela ndi kuba
Nanunso what happened after grabbing the land??? Mugabe was forced to do that by war veterans otherwise he was not willing. Read history my bro jealousy should not drive your thinking. Olo inu atakupasani malo mu limbe kufika mawa tipeza Plot for sale!! Wanna bet??