Malawi Congress Party (MCP) President and Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Lazarus Chakwera, has said he expects that reservations that many quarters have towards the land bills that were recently passed by Parliament will be addressed so that no-one feels short-changed.<\/p>\n
Parliament passed the Principal Land Bill, the Customary, the Physical Planning and the Land Survey bills but the first two continue stirring controversy with different quarters including traditional leaders saying their powers have been plucked off.<\/p>\n
During the passing of the Land Bill, opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) including Chakwera walked out of the chamber in protest of their rejection of recommendations which included that freehold on big estates should be changed to leasehold status.<\/p>\n
And addressing a political rally at Nthondo ground in the area of Traditional Authority (T\/A) Nthondo in Ntchisi North East Constituency, Chakwera said any law that Parliament passes must be in the best interest of Malawians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was disheartening that agreements which were made on the Land Bill were later rejected when the bill came into the chamber. We showed our concern but at the end, the bill still passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow getting the views of different people, it is important that we address the issues. The bills that have been passed can be corrected and we also have others like the Land Registration Bill which can address some issues,\u201d said Chakwera.<\/p>\n
Before addressing the rally, Chakwera attended a service at an Anglican Church in the area which is one of Ntchisi\u2019s remotest\u2014 with an uneven terrain, poor road network and without electricity and mobile phone networks.<\/p>\n
MP for the constituency, Olipa Chimangeni said the people in the area continue being neglected as if they are not part of Malawi.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was supposed to be one of the most developed areas. The first vice-president in democratic Malawi, Hon. Justin Malewezi comes from this area but his efforts to develop the area were frustrated by the then administration,\u201d said Chimangeni.<\/p>\n
She added that hunger has affected most people in the constituency.<\/p>\n
During the rally, T\/A Nthondo expressed concern over what he called the stripping of local leaders\u2019 powers on customary land following the passing of the Customary Land Bill.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the four land-related bills are awaiting President Peter Mutharika\u2019s approval before they can become acts of Parliament.<\/p>\n
However, according to LandNet, an organisation advocating for the adoption of pro-poor and equitable land resource policies and legislation, without the Land Registration Bill, implementing the four bills that have been passed passed will be problematic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) President and Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Lazarus Chakwera, has said he expects that reservations that many quarters have towards the land bills that were recently passed by Parliament will be addressed so that no-one feels short-changed. Parliament passed the Principal Land Bill, the Customary, the Physical Planning and the Land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28891","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\/28891","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=28891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28896,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28891\/revisions\/28896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}