Some settlers along the Shire River in Liwonde are standing in the way of the development of a dry port, claiming compensation from the investor, Mota-Engil.<\/p>\n
Mota-Engil recently signed a concession agreement with the Malawi government to develop a dry port at Liwonde under a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement.<\/p>\n
Mota-Engil, in liaison with the Ministry of Lands, already paid over one million euros (K800 million) to settlers around Kaudzu area in 2014 to kick start the project.<\/p>\n
However, the settlers are now claiming that the compensation paid only covered houses and trees and that they are still expecting payment for \u201cdisturbance and relocation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were not paid disturbance and relocation transport allowances. That is what we are looking for before any development starts taking place,\u201d said secretary for the ex-Kaudzu settlers committee, Davie Mkandawire.<\/p>\n
The settlers have since taken the issue to court for arbitration while some have resumed farming on the land.<\/p>\n
Maching a District Commissioner, Reinghard Chavula, said Mota-Engil followed the procedure as laid down in compensation statutes which stipulate that payments be made for existing structures and trees only.<\/p>\n
Mota-Engil public relations consultant, Thomas Chafunya, said compensations were calculated by the government based on which the company made payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we cannot currently comment on the issue because it is now in court,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Liwonde Port, when developed, is expected to help reduce costs in the transportation of fuel, sugar, coal and fertiliser through direct rail link with the Nacala railway line.<\/p>\n
It was first conceived in 1965 when a German Engineering firm was contracted to investigate the possibility of linking the northern part of Lake Malawi with the Nacala Rail.<\/p>\n
An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was approved by the Malawi government in 1969 but efforts to develop the port were disrupted when war broke out in Mozambique in 1975.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some settlers along the Shire River in Liwonde are standing in the way of the development of a dry port, claiming compensation from the investor, Mota-Engil. Mota-Engil recently signed a concession agreement with the Malawi government to develop a dry port at Liwonde under a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement. Mota-Engil, in liaison with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22921","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\/22921","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=22921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22923,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22921\/revisions\/22923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}