Departments and agencies that are housed in Blantyre’s government building are struggling with some of their crucial operations after the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) disconnected electricity at the building last Friday due to unpaid bill.
The disconnection has halted operations of several government offices except the Immigration Department which is connected to a separate meter.
According to sources, the disconnection is a result of the departments’ failure to raise money for utility bills due to funding cuts being experienced in government.
Some of the departments that are now forced to seek printing and other services that require electricity outside the building are the Administrator General, department of information, Office of the President and Cabinet, Trade, Legal Aid Bureau, Blantyre District Council, Lands and Housing, Fiscal Police and Judiciary.
The office of the administrator general is responsible for the administration of deceased estates and collection of estate duty.
Legal Aid Bureau fulfills the governments constitutional obligations on ensuring every person’s right to justice and legal remedies and vulnerable groups rely on it in accessing legal aid services.
The commercial banks that provide their services in the building are also being forced to operate manually and do the network entries in their respective branches in the evening.
One of the officers operating in the building Blantyre District Council Chairperson Thomas Kaumba said the district commissioner’s office, which is responsible for all development projects in Blantyre is forced to do some of its tasks at the District Health Office(DHO).
Kaumba said the problem is that there are some offices that pay their share of the bill in time while others take time to settle their dues.
“The DHO’s office is an overwhelmed office already and adding more services for other offices that are supposed to work independently because of electricity disconnection is not on. For the District Commissioner’s office to release funds for some projects, they need to operate in an environment that has electricity to use the computers but with the disconnected building all that has stopped,” Kaumba said.
He said the district council already asked the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to be transferred to the other building for smooth operations.
“If it is not electricity disconnection, then expect water disconnection. It is just difficult to operate in such environment,” he said.
Spokesperson in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Charles Vintulla said the ministry through the department of housing will speed the process of settling the bill.
“Whenever we have such accumulated bill, we sit down and see how we can settle it. In this particular case we will do the same to ensure that the offices in that building continue to operate normally,” Vintulla said.
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