The rains are finally here and, as usual, instead of celebrating with the hope that we will have a bumper harvest, the main stories are about destruction that the rains have caused.
\nThe rains have not even peaked but, already, 70 families have been displaced in Rumphi with five people injured in the process. Property, too, has been lost.
\nThe most disturbing news is, perhaps, what has been recently reported that six people have died, many others are missing and feared dead while a thousand others have been left destitute after heavy rains that fell in Lilongwe.
\nEach year, we are always saying the same things that we cannot continue to be losing people and property after heavy rains. Something needs to be done with urgency,
\nAs we are speaking, the country is yet to recover from the devastating floods of 2015 which kept almost everybody off balance. When we experienced the floods then, word was that, as a nation, we must avoid a repeat of that by putting in place preventive measures. Of course, commendable efforts have been made but it looks like they have not been enough just as they have taken a snail\u2019s place.
\nWe would want to agree with Vice- President Saulos Chilima that we should, by all possible means, desist from building houses near rivers which makes them prone to destruction once heavy rains come.
\nThe government, too, has a great role to play by, among other things, making it possible that people have decent and long lasting houses built on safe land if we are to avoid such disasters.
\nThe strain these disasters put on families as well as the nation is too much and we need to find lasting solutions to these.
\nWhile we are working hard to find solutions to end what has become a seasonal occurrence, we would like to appeal to the government and well-wishers to assist the victims in Rumphi as well as those in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rains are finally here and, as usual, instead of celebrating with the hope that we will have a bumper harvest, the main stories are about destruction that the rains have caused. The rains have not even peaked but, already, 70 families have been displaced in Rumphi with five people injured in the process. Property, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57744","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\/57744","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=57744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57746,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57744\/revisions\/57746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}