Kasungu vendors protests, demand Municipal Council leadership to go

Kasungu vendors on Saturday staged protests demanding the resignation of Municipality Council leadership for failing to send fire fighters when the district’s central market was gutted.Kasungu Municipality PRO Mr Kadyakapita shows journalists the broken grasses as damaged by the vendors.

Fire gutted Kasungu market on Friday night till Saturday morning.

The angry vendors smashed the window panes of the municipal office block before descending onto  the stationed fire engine.

Addressing the vendors, Member of Parliament for the area, Amon Nkhata had no kind words for council.

“I have been briefed that the municipality has not assisted you since the fire started on Friday night, this is very bad because had it been that the fire brigade team arrived here in time  they could have assisted in rescuing some goods. I will also report this to Parliament. You pay tax and you were supposed to be assisted in real time,” said Nkhata.

Chairman of Kasungu Central market hardware division Daniel Banda said: “We want these people to go, they have failed to do their job.”

However in an interview, Kasungu Mayor Ireen Katola, started by apologising to the vendors for not being at the place in real time.

“We failed to go in real time because we were under dilemma. One, we had no fire engine to dispatch because the one we have is faulty. Secondly, we feared for our lives since vendors were shouting at that time,” said Katola.

The municipality is working on the broken fire engine.

Kasungu Municipality spokesperson Martin Kadyakapita confirmed that the fire engine has been grounded for long time.

Kadyakapita said  it has taken so long without fixing the problem due to lack of finances.

The municipality, despite collecting revenue from vendors, has been running without fire engine since last year.

Director of works Shupikayi Chabvundikila recently travelled to Lilongwe looking for the spare part of the engine but she was not successful.