Learners from Manolo Village in the area of Traditional Authority Mpherembe in Mzimba are asked to pay about K200 to canoe operators on South Rukuru River to help them cross to the other side to attend school at Emcisweni Community Day Secondary.
This follows an accident which involved a Plan Malawi’s relief food truck vehicle which destroyed Manolo Bridge before it plunged into South Rukuru River on January 1, 2016.
According to Senior Chief Mpherembe the development is worrisome as most students come from poor families and can hardly raise the said amount on daily basis if the dependents are to attend classes throughout the week.
“This is rainy season and most infrastructural activities do come to a halt as such it remains uncertain when the bridge will be rehabilitated to aid movement especially for school going children who canoe operators have ceased the opportunity to cash in on,” said Mpherembe.
He asked council authorities and other relevant stakeholders to come in quickly and fix the bridge or provide an alternative solution arguing apart from the learners the relief food distribution to starving families also remains threatened in the wake of the broken bridge.
District Commissioner (DC) for Mzimba Thomas Chirwa said in a telephone interview on Friday that it is not the council’s mandate to work on the bridge because it belongs to the National Roads Authority.
“Manolo bridge belongs to the Roads Authority so does the road there. However, we have not kept quiet. We have asked Nkhatabay District Council to borrow us one big canoe or boat for students to use at the meantime as the bridge awaits resuscitation,” said Chirwa.
He also disclosed that the government’s regional engineer for the North has been alerted and that consultations are still underway on how to go about the problem.
Meanwhile, beneficiaries of the relief food items have raised concern that the current rations are unpalatable since they are the same that got soaked into the water during the accident.
But Plan Malawi’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Response Manager Tambuzgani Msiska refuted the reports saying all the 278 kilogrammes of pulses and 131 kilogrammes of maize that were soaked in the water during the accident were all withdrawn from the rations set for distribution.
“Our organisation upholds humanitarian core principles and standards as such we cannot distribute commodities which are spoiled or damaged and unfit for human consumption,” said Msiksa in an e-mailed response on Friday.
Over 41, 164 households in Mzimba are among the 2,000,000 Malawians in the country’s 15 districts which are faced with acute food shortage due to the dry spell experienced during the 2014-2015 growing season.
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