The nation is still trying to make sense of a disaster that resulted from a boat accident on Lake Malawi at Mlowe in Rumphi District on Sunday evening.
According to Officer-in-Charge of Rumphi Police Station, Denis Banda, the people were overloaded in a boat meant for fishing and not designed to carry passengers.
Up to now, the police do not know how many people were packed in the boat but survivors have revealed that there were over 80 passengers in the fishing boat.
As we went to press, five people were confirmed dead, 20 were still missing while 60 managed to swim to the shore.
While we condole the affected families, we wish to say that the accident is a result of laissez-faire attitude with which we, as a nation, are handling affairs of the public.
We wonder as to where relevant government departments which are supposed to preside over issues of water transport were when innocent Malawians were forced to board a fishing boat. We refuse to blame the passengers because they had no alternative means of transport to take them back to their homes.
Apart from water transport, the only other option for the people was air transport. And we all know that air transport is a far-fetched dream for the affected people.
In the absence of government regulation, businesspersons take advantage of the desperation of Malawians along the lakeshore to make money at a great risk of human life.
The police have confessed that there is no authority that regulates transport in the peninsula area of the lake.
If we were serious as a country, those lives could not have been lost. We are talking of experienced swimmers who have part of the lake for their entire lives. Surely, they could not have failed to cover a distance of 100 metres to the shore.
What they needed were life jackets and other tools that would helped them to keep afloat and be able to call for rescue. But there was nothing of that sort, especially because the vessel was designed for fishing and not to carry passengers.
We call upon the government to wake up and enforce policies that will protect lives of Malawians living along the shores.
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