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| Features |
| Lilongwe caught unawares |
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by
George Ntonya, 13 October 2004
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18:17:25
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Lilongwe City residents should expect some change now that President Bingu wa Mutharika, all cabinet ministers and heads of government departments are supposed to be based in the city, officials have said.
Mutharika announced on assuming the high office last May that unlike the first two presidents, the late Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and Bakili Muluzi, he would not operate from the hub of commerce Blantyre, but from the capital city to reduce administrative costs. He also ordered that all his cabinet ministers and heads of government departments be based there.
Having stayed for years without street lights in many parts of the city, residents can now expect something better. According to City Assembly chief executive Donton Mkandawire, there are plans for the Assembly to light up the streets and tidy up places under its jurisdiction, such as produce markets.
Sanitation has been one of the problems in the capital, because of littering as a result of street vending and shortage of vehicles for the city Assembly to remove garbage in time.
Mkandawire says the Assembly is in the process of re-erecting electricity poles along the road linking Kamuzu International Airport and the City Centre, where vandals believed to be MCP sympathisers stole cables about seven years ago.
The vandals felled metal electricity poles between Police headquarters in Area 30 and the airport when the former government announced it had changed Kamuzu Stadium, Kamuzu Central Hospital and Kamuzu International Airport to Chichiri Stadium, Lilongwe Central Hospital and Lilongwe International Airport, respectively.
“Muluzi apange zake (Muluzi should build his own structures),” the vandals inscribed on some placards they threw along the road at the time of felling the poles in 1996. Since that time travelling at night between the airport and the City Centre or Old Town has been a dangerous encounter.
In 2000 the Assembly’s director of engineering Andrew Lwanda told the business community in the city the Assembly required about K94 million to rehabilitate the electricity system along the airport road alone and about K203 million to light up the townships, where there were no street lights. But the Assembly had no money for the exercise because its revenue was not adequate for such an investment.
“Street lights do not only make the city beautiful. They also put away criminals,” said a resident of Area 25 Robert Chikuse when Lwanda said the Assembly could not afford to light up the streets in 2000. He felt that criminals took advantage of the city’s dark streets to waylay night travellers.
Mkandawire says the Presidential Drive — which runs from Area 18 round-about to the New State House — will also have lights up to the New State House, which President Mutharika is expected to occupy soon.
“I am positive we are going to get money for the project and soon we’ll hire contractors to tell us how much the project will cost,” Mkandawire says adding that instead of metal poles the Assembly would now erect concrete poles with overhead cables.
The crime rate in the city should also decrease because the police have pledged to engage an extra gear in the fight against law breakers.
“For sure we are going to increase the number of police patrol teams in the city and the crime rate will go down,” Kelvin Maigwa from the Police public relations office says.
Already both civilian and uniformed police officers are seen patrolling some pockets of the city regarded as “hot spots of criminals”. The stretch between Nature Sanctuary and Toyota Malawi, Bwalo La Njobvu and the precincts of the main bus terminus in Old Town are some of the targets.
“I can assure you that the crime rate will decrease in the city,” Maigwa says.
Motorists should also expect faster movements on the city roads now that National Roads Authority (NRA) intends to build bypasses to address the problem of traffic congestion.
NRA spokesperson Portia Kajanga says her organisation intends to invite tenders for the design of the bypasses on the eastern and western sides of the city this financial year.
NRA cannot expand Kamuzu Procession Road — the most important road in the city — because some people have built shops within the road reserve, she says. Currently, the organisation is building new Chilambula Road, which will be wider than the old one.
But “NRA has no immediate plans to provide flyovers in the city because the traffic volumes do not warrant such an extremely expensive investment”.
People who have houses for rent should be celebrating because of Mutharika’s decision to have the government machinery concentrated in the capital.
According to Marko Banda managing director of Ching’onga Estate Agents — one of the country’s property managers — the demand for houses has increased sharply in the last three months because of government officials that have transferred to the city. And rental is also likely to go up.
“We are receiving a lot of enquires for houses, but we do not have adequate houses to meet the increasing demand,” Banda says. “Because the demand is getting higher at a time when houses are in short supply, I foresee landlords adjusting rentals upwards.
“The demand for houses offers great business opportunities for those who have the capacity to build houses for rent |
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