Malawi Housing Corp. hikes rentals by 25%: ‘Its due to devaluation’
Tenants of the Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) will from next month dig deeper into their pockets following the corporation’s rental hike by 25 percent.
The Corporation’s Board has since attributed the move to the recent devaluation of the kwacha and that they should have increased the rentals way back.
MHC General Manager, Wezi Mkandawire said the corporation has raised the rentals claiming everything has gone up leaving with no option to cover up their costs.
“This is not an issue for the tenants to worry about because everybody is aware that things have gone up due to the devaluation of the kwacha, so raising rentals with 25 Kwacha on every K100 is reasonable compared to the adjustment of prices of goods and services offered by others,” said the General Manager.
She further said despite the fact that MHC is supposed to raise the rentals every year, the parastatal has not revised its rentals for some years which makes the change long overdue.
“The Malawi Housing Corporation is supposed to raise the rentals with 10 percent annually and so far it has taken long for it to do so,” said Mkandawire.
The MHC general Manager also disclosed that the corporation is facing challenges to embark on a massive renovation of the outlived houses countrywide due to financial resources.
“We are aware that some houses have outlived their life span and we have started renovating some of them in different locations.
“However, the parasternal cannot manage to carry out maintenance countrywide due to financial constraints,” said Mkandawire.
One of the tenants in Chinyonga, Lawrence Phiri said the corporation could have first undertaken renovation exercise on the houses before hiking the rentals.
“We are not against the hike rather it could have been better if they had, first carried out maintenance work before the adjustment in order that we should be satisfied when we are parting with our money,” said Phiri.
MHC is a parastatal organization which is responsible for the construction and renting of houses to the public to ease the accommodation problems.
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