Foreign Affairs Minister, Francis Kasaila, has warned Malawians who go to South Africa by road to avoid using the Tete-Beira route in Mozambique.<\/p>\n
The alert follows the gunning down of four men who were among 24 Malawians travelling to South Africa on April 23. The attack left three others severely wounded while 17 others returned home on April 30 through Mwanza Border.<\/p>\n
Kasaila has also disclosed that Malawi, has asked Mozambique to investigate the killing of the four \u201cinnocent Malawians\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlong the Tete-Beira route we have had incidences where the government forces have been clashing with the Renamo forces and therefore we should avoid using that route. It is highly insecure and we may be putting our lives in danger and it is important that we should avoid that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kasaila also called upon traditional authorities, government officials and other stakeholders to sensitise their people on the risks of travelling to South Africa on the assumption that they will be employed there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our laws it is illegal to facilitate the travel of these people to South Africa without proper documentation because that is trafficking in persons and it is my belief that our colleagues in the law enforcement section will take appropriate action,\u201d said Kasaila.<\/p>\n
But some Malawians accuse government of being reactive on the issue.<\/p>\n
They argue that since Malawi has already been bearing the brunt of the crisis, which has seen hundreds of Mozambicans fleeing into the country, a caution to travellers was overdue.<\/p>\n
Sam Kalanda of Area 47 in Lilongwe has said that government relaxed too much and only got moved after hearing that four of its people had been killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course Mozambique has been maintaining that there is no war in the country but at least, we have seen asylum seekers entering Malawi. That should have compelled government to do something.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hear governments warning their citizens against travelling to certain countries because there are conflicts or some other emergency. We even hear of some governments evacuating their citizens from countries where there is war. But so far, we haven\u2019t heard anything that our government is doing something regarding Malawians who are in Mozambique,\u201d said Kalanda.<\/p>\n
Many other Malawians who commented on our question on social media echoed Kalanda\u2019s concern. They have since challenged government to do something as quickly as possible so that Malawians in Mozambique are safe.<\/p>\n
The attack on the Malawians who were travelling to South Africa happened two days before President Peter Mutharika, Mozambique\u2019s Filipe Nyusi and Zambia\u2019s Edgar Lungu met at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe where, among others, they discussed the Mozambique conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreign Affairs Minister, Francis Kasaila, has warned Malawians who go to South Africa by road to avoid using the Tete-Beira route in Mozambique. The alert follows the gunning down of four men who were among 24 Malawians travelling to South Africa on April 23. The attack left three others severely wounded while 17 others returned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23987","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\/23987","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=23987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23992,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23987\/revisions\/23992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}