College of Medicine (CoM), a constituent college of the University of Malawi, has urged people in the country to take part in research aimed at finding ways of improving livelihood for local people.
The college’s coordinator for Lungwena Umoyo Project, which is being implemented in Mangochi, Raphael Chipatala, made the remarks on Friday during a handover ceremony of two boreholes that will benefit 37 villages under Traditional Authority Namabvi in the district.
The boreholes have been drilled in the areas of Group Village Headmen Kuwilasa and Liwale with funding from the University of Tampere of Finland and Nutriset, a manufacturing company from France.
Chipatala thanked the people of the two villages for taking part in the surveys, which revealed the need for water, schools and health facilities within the area, a thing which he said could not have been possible if they refused to participate in the research.
“We encourage you to continue supporting people who will be coming to you to look for information. People cannot know the problems of your areas if you are not willing to tell the situation on the ground, as was the case with some people who are fond of shunning researchers,” said Chipatala.
On the boreholes, Chipatala encouraged the communities to form committees that will be responsible to maintain the boreholes once they have developed a fault.
In his remarks, Traditional Authority Namabvi thanked CoM for drilling the boreholes, which he said have eased the challenges which people in the area were facing to access portable water.
Namabvi explained that initially, people from the two areas used to drink water from unprotected sources, a situation which he said was risking most of them to water borne diseases such as cholera.
“In my whole area, it is people from Kuwilasa and Liwale who were most affected by cholera outbreak. But now I hope this will be a thing of the past,” said Namabvi.
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