Kapito blasts MP Ngumuya on water crisis; demo on

Consumers rights activist, John Kapito has lambasted Member of Parliament for Blantyre City South, Allan Ngumuya for defending Blantyre Water Board’s inefficiency to provide water in Blantyre City.

Kapito is on Thursday expected to lead consumers to demonstrate against BWB with Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) expected to present a petition to the utility provider on the water scarcity currently at critical moment in Blantyre city.

Ngumuya, since last week, has been using the public broadcaster MBC to defend BWB on the crisis while urging people not to panic as they experience the critical moment of water outage.

Speaking during a news conference in Blantyre on Tuesday, Kapito labelled Ngumuya as insensitive.

“How can a member of parliament utter such sentiments? That’s being insensitive to the problems people are currently facing due to water shortages,” Kapito blasted.

Kapito demanded Ngumuya to resign from his position as a parliamentarian for failing to serve the will of the people.

“He is not fit to be a member of parliament. He has failed to understand the challenges people are facing, the long distances women are walking in search for water just because the service provider is
failing to do its job,” said Kapito of the ruling DPP parliamentarian who was ushered into parliament as an independent legislature.

Kapito warned consumers would smear BWB offices with faeces just to show their frustrations on the current crisis.

He added: “We will camp at BWB until the situation improves. We understand they are working on upgrading the water supply system, but that shouldn’t be excuse to deny us water.”

Aside the demonstrations, which will attract affected residents from the townships and residential areas within the commercial city Blantyre, Cama is expected to hand over its petition to BWB with
seven-listed demands.

The consumer rights activist said they have been forced to call for the demonstration due to continued water shortages, which have affected businesses and lives of many people.

“Basic services such as hospitals and hospitality institutions are failing to provide consumers adequately and safely because of this water shortage. Businesses have suffered too impacting greatly on their production levels and provision of basic commodities to consumers in Blantyre and the country in general,” lamented Kapito.

Kapito who was recently appointed Board Chairperson for Southern Region Water Board said consumers have been aggravated by BWB failure to listen to their request to understand and appreciate gravity of frequent water shortages.

He has since demanded government to immediately restructure and remove the incompetent management of Blantyre Water Board if water supplies are not restored in Blantyre with immediate effect.

Kapito feels that consumers pay for this water service and should not be subjected to unnecessary suffering resulting from gross mismanagement and poor service delivery by management of Blantyre
Water Board.

The peaceful demonstrations are expected to start from Kamuzu upper stadium to BWB offices on Thursday morning at 9am.