{"id":50241,"date":"2017-07-13T11:35:51","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=50241"},"modified":"2017-07-13T11:42:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:42:55","slug":"malawi-defence-force-owes-water-board-k1billion-in-water-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2017\/07\/13\/malawi-defence-force-owes-water-board-k1billion-in-water-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi Defence Force owes Water Board K1 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>L<\/strong>ILONGWE Water Board (LWB) has said the Malawi Defense Force (MDF) owes the water utility a staggering K1 billion for one year alone and accused the country\u2019s top security organisation of wastefulness.<\/p>\n<p>LWB General Manager, Alfonso Chikuni, said this on Wednesday when he appeared before a joint parliamentary committee of Public Accounts (Pac), Agriculture, Irrigation and Water and Budget and Finance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey owe us K1 billion in water bills from July 2016 to June 2017. People there don\u2019t care. They grow <em>mondokwa <\/em>(green maize) in October,\u201d Chikuni said.<\/p>\n<p>Chikuni was called to Parliament by the committees to explain the status of President Peter Mutharika\u2019s signature water project, the $435 million Lake Malawi Water Project.<\/p>\n<p>Chikuni emphasised that water in the country was not as expensive as people say, saying free water is always abused.<\/p>\n<p>He said MDF abuses the water because Treasury pays for them.<\/p>\n<p>Chikuni said 10 percent of its water in Lilongwe goes to the MDF yet payment is always a problem as the government takes almost a year before clearing its water bills in government institutions.<\/p>\n<p>He, however, could not say how much all the government institutions owe LWB in water bills but described it as a substantial amount.<\/p>\n<p>Chikuni said next month, the board will roll out installation of prepaid meters in all government institutions, saying they are the culprits in non- payment of water bills.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery soon, actually next month, we are starting the installation of prepaid water meters and we will start with MDF then Ministry of Health,\u201d Chikuni said.<\/p>\n<p>Just a week ago, LWB disconnected water at the magnificent Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe for non-payment of water bills amounting to K69 million.<\/p>\n<p>In a related development, Chikuni told the parliamentarians that the board continues to pay K10 million to MDF soldiers who are guarding Dzalanyama Forest.<\/p>\n<p>He said although it is not the mandate of LWB to care for forests, it is forced to pay for the protection of the forest because it is a watershed for Lilongwe and surrounding areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LILONGWE Water Board (LWB) has said the Malawi Defense Force (MDF) owes the water utility a staggering K1 billion for one year alone and accused the country\u2019s top security organisation of wastefulness. LWB General Manager, Alfonso Chikuni, said this on Wednesday when he appeared before a joint parliamentary committee of Public Accounts (Pac), Agriculture, Irrigation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50241","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\/50241","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=50241"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50251,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50241\/revisions\/50251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}