Malawi’sdemo critic donates 300 bags of fertiliser to poor farmers

Households who did not benefit from the Farm Input Subsidy Program in Usisya area in Malawi’s northern district of Nkhata Bay will now have an opportunity to apply fertilizer in their crops following a donation by a Usisya based businessman Watson Katawa Nyasulu.

Nyasulu, who wants to counter the January 17 demonstrations planned by the Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama), is the proprietor of Katawa bus services which plies between cities of Mzuzu and Blantyre.

He has pledged to donate 300 bags of fertilizers to poor farmers in a bid to enhance their production and promote food security in the district.

Nyasulu said his donation is part of his ‘End Poverty Initiative’ which he has launched to reduce wide poverty gap between the poor and rich in the district.

Katawa: Donates

“As a country we can’t develop if we are failing to reduce the wide gap between the rich and the poor, this is not something to be taken by government only, we need to promote the spirit of uplifting each other like the way foreign investors are doing.

“When they have made profits on their business they leave the shops to their relatives and open new ones so that their relatives also improve their economic status,” he said.

He then asked the well to do people to think about a poor man who is even failing to buy soap and take initiative to improve their living standards so that they in turn contribute effectively towards the development of the nation.

Nyasulu maintained that the country cannot recover from the economic situation even if people hold demonstrations against government if the rich do not take part in uplifting the poor.

He said the fertilizer donation project will be running every year and that the beneficiaries will in return contribute 20kilograms of maize each to be distributed to the elderly, orphans and other vulnerable groups.

Nyasulu however, refuted claims by some politicians in his area, Nkhatabay Bay north constituency that his gesture is part of his campaign for 2014 parliamentary contests.

“I started doing this in 2009 and have done a lot. If I want to contest as Member of Parliament for the constituency I can definitely make it but that’s not my wish. I had been brought in a poor family and I know how painful is to be poor.

“They are saying that because they don’t put the welfare of a common man at heart. How can you feel if someone is failing to go to school just because of lack of school fees, yet you spend your money for drinking and other useless things? God will punish us for ignoring the poor,” said Nyasulu.

In his ‘End Poverty Initiative’, he is also intending to support widows by providing them with small scale loans and help poor people in Usisya to form village banking groups, a social income transfer which is helping transform lives of most people in most rural areas in the country.

Group Village Headman Murwa of the area hailed the End Poverty Initiative saying it has a potential to transform people’s lives in the area and urged other well to people to take a leaf from Nyasulu’s gesture.

“He has built houses for the elderly and one of them is an old lady who was staying in an old dilapidated grass thatched house where she was staying with her seven orphans. He is also building a teacher’s house at Chikwina Community Day Secondary School where there is no even a single teacher’s house,, said the traditional leader.

Some people in the area are however saying that this is not pleasing the MP for the area, Ephraim Mganda Chiume, who is also a Minister of Foreign Affairs because he feels Nyasulu is campaigning for his parliamentary seat.

 

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