Malawi Police Service’s officers living in the institution’s houses will have to endure a longer stay in the rundown structures as there appears no intention from government to refurbish the houses let alone construct new ones.
In February last year, President Mutharika assured the nation that his government would arrange with institutional housing establishments to make sure that the existing houses, including those belonging to Malawi Prison Service and Malawi Defence Force, are renovated as well as that new ones are constructed.
This was during a tour of the Limbe Central Business District (CBD), where among other facilities, Mutharika visited some of the Malawi Police Service (MPS) lines there whose houses are dilapidated and almost inhabitable which Mutharika himself described as “very depressing”.
But more than a year latter not even a single brick on any of the toured houses has felt the layer of a new paint. Most of the sewerage systems are broken, creating a disturbing odour in town.
Some officers have been forced to dig small pit latrines in front of the houses, facing the main road, worsening the already ugly face of the ‘slums’. As that is not enough, inhabitants of these ramshackle apartments are forced to partition rooms using mere clothes to create a semblance of privacy between parents and children, and or children of different sexes.
Last year, our sister paper, Malawi News spoke to some police officers living in Kanjedza. Their ordeal carried one common hopeless tone.
“I have been in this house since 2007 and this is what I have had to live with and nobody cares. These things are never fixed; so, in a way, we are being asked to look at them as normal,” said one officer pointing at foul water dripping from his toilet.
When asked recently, Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security on how much the ministry had proposed, in the coming budget for the maintenance of police houses in the country, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry, Beston Chisamile only said the figures were being “looked at”.
He, however, referred us to police headquarters, saying the Development Office in the Malawi Police Service has the figures on maintenance and other activities to be undertaken.
But national police deputy spokesperson, Thomeck Nyaude, said his office was not aware of any funds proposed for the maintenance of police houses.
“What I know is that government will construct some police houses. But I am not aware of any plans or any funds towards maintenance of houses. I would advise that you ask those at the ministry,” said Nyaude.
But in the Budget Statement presented to Parliament, Minister of Finance, Goodall Gondwe did not mention about funds set aside for construction of institutional house, but that there is money allocated for the recruitment of police officers.
Of the about 13,000 police officers in the country, 4,500 police officers live in police lines; others live in government leased houses while the remaining number rent on their own.
According to national budget documents, between 2013 and 2015, about K5.6 billion has been allocated for the MPS’s Management and Support Services from which the building section which is responsible for the maintenance of the houses in the service draws its funding.
Leave a Reply