{"id":19857,"date":"2016-03-01T13:14:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T11:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=19857"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:14:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T11:14:43","slug":"absence-of-jetty-frustrates-development-at-likoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2016\/03\/01\/absence-of-jetty-frustrates-development-at-likoma\/","title":{"rendered":"Absence of jetty frustrates development at Likoma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>T<\/strong>he people of Likoma have called on authorities to expedite the construction of a jetty on the Island district saying the absence of the ship anchorage is frustrating development efforts on the Island which solely relies on water transport.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the district\u2019s community hall during an interface meeting facilitated by National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) last week, the people said the construction of a jetty should be prioritised over all other projects if meaningful development was to be achieved in the area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should have been talking about other issues by now. Look at Balaka and other districts that attained district status the same time we did, the districts have infrastructure that one can really point at and say yes, we have a district here. Why don\u2019t we have a jetty 16 years since Likoma was declared a stand-alone district?\u201d wondered Traditional Authority Mkumpha.<\/p>\n<p>Participants observed that the absence of the harbour was also suffocating business activities with traders incurring extra costs in loading and off-loading their merchandise. They said it was also a major setback for the construction industry as budgets have to be adjusted upwards to accommodate extra costs.<\/p>\n<p>Socially, the absence of the jetty has also been a challenge for the elderly, physically challenged, children and women who are forced to either undress or have their clothes get soaked when boarding or alighting from the ship.<\/p>\n<p>Likoma Area Development Committee Chairperson Alexander Chitanda thanked Nice for facilitating the interface meeting which brought together the ADC, council secretariat and chiefs saying it is only when people choose and understand the development priorities for their areas that they can meaningfully participate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis meeting has shown and proved that the people of this island really take the jetty seriously. I am grateful to Nice for this meeting. I hope when experts have finished their feasibility study, we will all gang up and support the project,\u201d said Chitanda.<\/p>\n<p>Nice Regional Civic Education Officer for North Vincent Kalawa thanked chiefs and all members of the ADC for opening up and speaking freely during the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs Nice we are happy when the leaders and citizens at grassroots speak freely. The heated discussion on the jetty has indeed demonstrated that you are able to choose priorities in development and that you have a zeal to develop yourselves and your district,\u201d said Kalawa.<\/p>\n<p>The community of Likoma had last year embarked on constructing a jetty using locally available resources. The project calls for a significant amount of money to engage experts.<\/p>\n<p>A trust is already engaged in fundraising activities in towns and cities to complement the efforts of the jetty construction. Coincidentally, strong windy rains washed away the Nkhata Bay jetty earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The people of Likoma have called on authorities to expedite the construction of a jetty on the Island district saying the absence of the ship anchorage is frustrating development efforts on the Island which solely relies on water transport. Speaking at the district\u2019s community hall during an interface meeting facilitated by National Initiative for Civic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19861,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857\/revisions\/19861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}