Construction of sub-standard structures is one of the factors contributing to threats to lives of innocent people when disasters strike, Vice-President Saulos Chilima has said.
\nChilima made the call at Makuta Primary School, Traditional Authority Kachenga, in Balaka District when he presented relief items to families affected by a storm that hit the area on Monday, January 8.
\n\u201cLet me appeal to the district council that when awarding contracts, give them to contractors who have the expertise to erect strong structures that guarantee safety to people\u2019s lives,\u201d Chilima said.
\nA total of 698 households have been affected by the storm in various areas of Balaka District. The district is also facing the challenge of the fall armyworm, which has wiped out 19, 000 hectares of maize fields.
\nCommenting on the issue of the disaster, Chilima urged affected households not to despair, saying \u201cthe government is on the look-out\u201d.
\n\u201cThe relief items that I have brought today are for the people who have been affected; let us avoid corruption during the distribution so that all the affected people can benefit,\u201d he said.
\nChilima reminded people that climate change is real and that there was need to adopt mitigating measures.
\nChilima expressed gratitude to Balaka District Council for setting out to plant more than seven million trees this year alone.
\nIn December last year, President Peter Mutharika officially launched the national tree planting season that runs from December 15 to April 15.
\nThe country expects to plant at least 60 million trees during this season.
\nSpeaking earlier, Balaka District Commissioner, Rodrick Mateauma, thanked the government for the timely response to the disaster. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Construction of sub-standard structures is one of the factors contributing to threats to lives of innocent people when disasters strike, Vice-President Saulos Chilima has said. Chilima made the call at Makuta Primary School, Traditional Authority Kachenga, in Balaka District when he presented relief items to families affected by a storm that hit the area on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59064","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\/59064","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=59064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59066,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59064\/revisions\/59066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}