Monday, 17 November 2008
Malawi Telecommunication announces cable project
Malawi Telecommunications, the country's sole provider of fixed telecom services, has announced plans to lay underground fiber-optic cables throughout the country at a cost of $30 million.
Increased user demand for technology has necessitated the project, according to Lester Tandwe, MTL head of IT. Malawi has entered into massive telecom infrastructure development in order to compete with other countries in the region, he added.
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The company will kick off the project Dec. 1, Tandwe said, laying 50 kilometers of cable each day in order to launch services quickly.
"The first part of the cable project will be operational by April 2009, while the second part will be operational by 2010 and will connect to international cables to provide international bandwidth," he explained.
Increased user demand for technology has necessitated the project, according to Lester Tandwe, MTL head of IT. Malawi has entered into massive telecom infrastructure development in order to compete with other countries in the region, he added.
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The company will kick off the project Dec. 1, Tandwe said, laying 50 kilometers of cable each day in order to launch services quickly.
"The first part of the cable project will be operational by April 2009, while the second part will be operational by 2010 and will connect to international cables to provide international bandwidth," he explained.
MALAWI: Planning for a disaster
The state of preparedness for a natural disaster in Malawi's flood-prone areas as well as other locales is coming under intense scrutiny ahead of the expected annual rise in the rivers during the rainy season.
The seven areas usually affected by flooding are the districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje, along the lower Shire River, the southern district of Mangochi, the central districts of Salima and Dedza and the northern districts of Karonga and Mzimba.
But the dangers of flash flooding in areas not thought of as high-risk cannot be discounted. After prolonged rains in 1991, more than 1,000 people died in a flash flood in Phalombe district, in southern Malawi.
Annual programmes to teach people living in potentially dangerous flood-prone or low-lying areas to move to higher ground often meet with cultural intransigence.
One villager in the Lower Shire Valley said: "We cannot leave the land that was given to us by our ancestors. We buried them here, we will also be buried here, and here is where we cultivate our crops."
James Chiusiwa, Malawi's Coordinator for Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Rehabilitation in the Department of Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs (DoPDMA), said the government was preparing contingency plans, in cooperation with a host of local and international organisations.
"We have involved everyone from government officials to humanitarian organisations and local non-governmental organisations. We are holding meetings with district commissioners from the seven districts that are affected every year, to see how better we can plan before floods wreak havoc," he told IRIN.
A meeting to draw on past lessons is planned with various stakeholders in late November in the capital, Lilongwe.
"The government of Malawi, with support from the United Nations and its non-governmental organisations partners, is in the process of refining its national contingency plan to prepare for the upcoming flood season," Elias Mabaso, of the Regional Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Southern Africa, told IRIN.
A study, in partnership with the World Bank, is being conducted in one of Malawi's most flood-prone areas, the Shire River Valley, to "look at both preparedness and mitigation measures, and assist in the development of a disaster risk reduction strategy for the whole Lower Shire Valley," Chiusiwa said. "We want to take a step further and move beyond responding to catastrophes every year."
OCHA's Mabaso said: "Government led an effective response to last year's flooding, which saved lives due to disaster preparedness. This year, we are supporting the government to revise its contingency plan, based on current meteorological indications that Malawi will be receiving normal to above normal rainfall for most of the coming season.
"This could mean that more people, livestock and infrastructural damage could occur. The revision of the contingency plan will build on last year's success, to be even better prepared," he said.
Assessing risk
Malawi's disaster contingency plan assesses risks such as floods, drought and epidemics, by developing various scenarios, ranging from best-case to worst-case, for each risk.
"For example, if a flood occurs and 300,000 people are affected, it will include things such as search and rescue, [and] where [the flood victims] will be moved to temporarily," Mabaso said.
"In these temporary accommodation centres, which organisations are responsible for food or medicine? Most importantly, it identifies the roles and responsibilities of each organisation during the emergency, and when these actions will be taken," he said.
In July 2008 the European Commission provided €5m (US$6.3 million) for disaster preparedness in Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi and the Comoros.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) told IRIN that disaster preparedness was the core focus in terms of disaster management.
"Increasingly, our global focus is driven by the concept of 'early warning, early action'. We make resources and personnel available before a disaster hits, drawing on the state-of-the-art monitoring systems we have access to through partnerships with various meteorological and academic institutions," said Matthew Cochrane, IFRC communications manager for southern Africa.
"We now aim to take these warnings and relay them down to community levels where people, having received training by the Red Cross and other organisations, can disseminate the information and the take appropriate action."
Cochrane said a case in point was Mozambique, where floods claimed hundreds of lives and left thousands of people marooned in 2001. "This year [2008], because of the tireless work of organisations such as the Mozambique Red Cross, no one died, and hundreds of thousands of people were effectively evacuated before the water became too high; an unquestionable success that now needs to be replicated in other flood-prone countries."
The IFRC in southern Africa has been working on a Zambezi River Basin Initiative, a cross-border programme that aims to strengthen the resilience of communities living along the Zambezi River.
Cochrane said the IFRC was developing community-based early warning, pre-positioning essential relief supplies, and training volunteers to effectively respond to floods and other disasters.
"We will also be looking at how it can support communities to better withstand disasters, what information and skills they need to be able to overcome this annual problem, or even capitalise on it," he said.
"Remember, not too long ago in this region's history, annual floods were seen as positive because they left fertile soil, for example. How can we support people to rediscover this kind of experience?"
The Malawi Red Cross Society been training local people to monitor water levels and predict the chances of flooding, but a funding shortfall has meant that training could only be carried out in one district.
The seven areas usually affected by flooding are the districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje, along the lower Shire River, the southern district of Mangochi, the central districts of Salima and Dedza and the northern districts of Karonga and Mzimba.
But the dangers of flash flooding in areas not thought of as high-risk cannot be discounted. After prolonged rains in 1991, more than 1,000 people died in a flash flood in Phalombe district, in southern Malawi.
Annual programmes to teach people living in potentially dangerous flood-prone or low-lying areas to move to higher ground often meet with cultural intransigence.
One villager in the Lower Shire Valley said: "We cannot leave the land that was given to us by our ancestors. We buried them here, we will also be buried here, and here is where we cultivate our crops."
James Chiusiwa, Malawi's Coordinator for Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Rehabilitation in the Department of Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs (DoPDMA), said the government was preparing contingency plans, in cooperation with a host of local and international organisations.
"We have involved everyone from government officials to humanitarian organisations and local non-governmental organisations. We are holding meetings with district commissioners from the seven districts that are affected every year, to see how better we can plan before floods wreak havoc," he told IRIN.
A meeting to draw on past lessons is planned with various stakeholders in late November in the capital, Lilongwe.
"The government of Malawi, with support from the United Nations and its non-governmental organisations partners, is in the process of refining its national contingency plan to prepare for the upcoming flood season," Elias Mabaso, of the Regional Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Southern Africa, told IRIN.
A study, in partnership with the World Bank, is being conducted in one of Malawi's most flood-prone areas, the Shire River Valley, to "look at both preparedness and mitigation measures, and assist in the development of a disaster risk reduction strategy for the whole Lower Shire Valley," Chiusiwa said. "We want to take a step further and move beyond responding to catastrophes every year."
OCHA's Mabaso said: "Government led an effective response to last year's flooding, which saved lives due to disaster preparedness. This year, we are supporting the government to revise its contingency plan, based on current meteorological indications that Malawi will be receiving normal to above normal rainfall for most of the coming season.
"This could mean that more people, livestock and infrastructural damage could occur. The revision of the contingency plan will build on last year's success, to be even better prepared," he said.
Assessing risk
Malawi's disaster contingency plan assesses risks such as floods, drought and epidemics, by developing various scenarios, ranging from best-case to worst-case, for each risk.
"For example, if a flood occurs and 300,000 people are affected, it will include things such as search and rescue, [and] where [the flood victims] will be moved to temporarily," Mabaso said.
"In these temporary accommodation centres, which organisations are responsible for food or medicine? Most importantly, it identifies the roles and responsibilities of each organisation during the emergency, and when these actions will be taken," he said.
In July 2008 the European Commission provided €5m (US$6.3 million) for disaster preparedness in Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi and the Comoros.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) told IRIN that disaster preparedness was the core focus in terms of disaster management.
"Increasingly, our global focus is driven by the concept of 'early warning, early action'. We make resources and personnel available before a disaster hits, drawing on the state-of-the-art monitoring systems we have access to through partnerships with various meteorological and academic institutions," said Matthew Cochrane, IFRC communications manager for southern Africa.
"We now aim to take these warnings and relay them down to community levels where people, having received training by the Red Cross and other organisations, can disseminate the information and the take appropriate action."
Cochrane said a case in point was Mozambique, where floods claimed hundreds of lives and left thousands of people marooned in 2001. "This year [2008], because of the tireless work of organisations such as the Mozambique Red Cross, no one died, and hundreds of thousands of people were effectively evacuated before the water became too high; an unquestionable success that now needs to be replicated in other flood-prone countries."
The IFRC in southern Africa has been working on a Zambezi River Basin Initiative, a cross-border programme that aims to strengthen the resilience of communities living along the Zambezi River.
Cochrane said the IFRC was developing community-based early warning, pre-positioning essential relief supplies, and training volunteers to effectively respond to floods and other disasters.
"We will also be looking at how it can support communities to better withstand disasters, what information and skills they need to be able to overcome this annual problem, or even capitalise on it," he said.
"Remember, not too long ago in this region's history, annual floods were seen as positive because they left fertile soil, for example. How can we support people to rediscover this kind of experience?"
The Malawi Red Cross Society been training local people to monitor water levels and predict the chances of flooding, but a funding shortfall has meant that training could only be carried out in one district.
Malawi: Primaries to cause ruling party
Discrepancies and claims of vote rigging issues that have brought utter chaos to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) primary elections for prospective members of parliament, may as well prove to be the death nail on the party's head, political analysts have warned.
The party's primaries have been marred by accusations of irregularities, favouritism, and inefficiency, a development that has seen the spiraling of independents, a group of individuals frustrated by the process. But former DPP General Secretary, Dr. Hetherwick Ntaba, warned earlier this year that the party was aware of some people, who were strategically planted by the opposition UDF to ruin the party's chances of a land slide victory during the May 19, 2009 polls.
Chancellor College political analyst, Blessings Chinsinga, feels that the process could prove disastrous since the party is still in its formative years, and has no proper structures.
He warned that the said independents would divide the votes, thereby reducing DPP's chances of getting more members of parliament. These are crucial to president Bingu wa Mutharika's administration judging by events that marred parliamentary meeting during the past four years- where his minority government was forced to toe opposition lines, much to the chagrin of Mutharika, who reached the extent of prologuing parliament, for the first time in the country's history.
Chinsinga says the solution lies in not imposing candidates. This is a direct reference to the UDF, which imposed both presidential and parliamentary candidates on the people and fared badly in its electoral history since 1994.
Rafiq Hajat, Institute for Policy Interaction executive director, shares the same view, warning, however, that the DPP needs to promote fairness to avoid many "fortune-seeking" politicians jumping boat.
Hajat said that process (of fairness) has been hampered by the imposition of Mutharika as the party's torch-bearer in the 2009 polls. The party's National Governing Council (NGC) unilaterally declared Mutharika the party's presidential candidate, defying the constitutional need for a convention- a forum where electoral colleges make decisions that affect the administration of Malawian parties for a specified period of time.
"Every thing went wrong with Mutharika's imposition as presidential candidate for DPP. It defeats the spirit of democracy, because people are denied their right to make a choice. The end result has been that all aspiring MPs feel that that will be short-changed during the primaries and an environment of suspicion and mistrust is being created. It is too bad of a party in its formative years," said Hajat, a renowned analyst.
He said the recent development may "kill" the party's chances of growing big, as disintegration is more likely to be the status quo as the election time approaches. Hajat warns of more things to come for the DPP, a party that went into government without testing the ballot. It was formed by the president after ditching UDF, the party that sponsored him into power.
The 2009 polls could be the first on presidential level for DPP, though the party already tested Parliamentary elections when it scooped all five constituencies during bye-elections a couple of years ago, a development that shocked both political parties and analysts- a combination that ruled out the party's chances prior to the elections.
But DPP Secretary General, Henry Chimunthu Banda, said the party has done all it could to level the playing field and make the primaries free and fair, transparent and well-managed- an assertion vindicated by the fact that some DPP heavyweights, in form of cabinet ministers, have tumbled in the polls- sometimes succumbing to relative newcomers.
However, confusion reigns in the constituencies where cabinet ministers and presidential advisors threaten to tear the party asunder.
The party's primaries have been marred by accusations of irregularities, favouritism, and inefficiency, a development that has seen the spiraling of independents, a group of individuals frustrated by the process. But former DPP General Secretary, Dr. Hetherwick Ntaba, warned earlier this year that the party was aware of some people, who were strategically planted by the opposition UDF to ruin the party's chances of a land slide victory during the May 19, 2009 polls.
Chancellor College political analyst, Blessings Chinsinga, feels that the process could prove disastrous since the party is still in its formative years, and has no proper structures.
He warned that the said independents would divide the votes, thereby reducing DPP's chances of getting more members of parliament. These are crucial to president Bingu wa Mutharika's administration judging by events that marred parliamentary meeting during the past four years- where his minority government was forced to toe opposition lines, much to the chagrin of Mutharika, who reached the extent of prologuing parliament, for the first time in the country's history.
Chinsinga says the solution lies in not imposing candidates. This is a direct reference to the UDF, which imposed both presidential and parliamentary candidates on the people and fared badly in its electoral history since 1994.
Rafiq Hajat, Institute for Policy Interaction executive director, shares the same view, warning, however, that the DPP needs to promote fairness to avoid many "fortune-seeking" politicians jumping boat.
Hajat said that process (of fairness) has been hampered by the imposition of Mutharika as the party's torch-bearer in the 2009 polls. The party's National Governing Council (NGC) unilaterally declared Mutharika the party's presidential candidate, defying the constitutional need for a convention- a forum where electoral colleges make decisions that affect the administration of Malawian parties for a specified period of time.
"Every thing went wrong with Mutharika's imposition as presidential candidate for DPP. It defeats the spirit of democracy, because people are denied their right to make a choice. The end result has been that all aspiring MPs feel that that will be short-changed during the primaries and an environment of suspicion and mistrust is being created. It is too bad of a party in its formative years," said Hajat, a renowned analyst.
He said the recent development may "kill" the party's chances of growing big, as disintegration is more likely to be the status quo as the election time approaches. Hajat warns of more things to come for the DPP, a party that went into government without testing the ballot. It was formed by the president after ditching UDF, the party that sponsored him into power.
The 2009 polls could be the first on presidential level for DPP, though the party already tested Parliamentary elections when it scooped all five constituencies during bye-elections a couple of years ago, a development that shocked both political parties and analysts- a combination that ruled out the party's chances prior to the elections.
But DPP Secretary General, Henry Chimunthu Banda, said the party has done all it could to level the playing field and make the primaries free and fair, transparent and well-managed- an assertion vindicated by the fact that some DPP heavyweights, in form of cabinet ministers, have tumbled in the polls- sometimes succumbing to relative newcomers.
However, confusion reigns in the constituencies where cabinet ministers and presidential advisors threaten to tear the party asunder.
Malawi urged to improve population’s oral health
Dental Experts said there was need for the country to take extra measures to sensitise the population the possible quality of health which includes oral health.
Speaking in Lilongwe on Monday during the commemoration of National Oral Health Month, Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) Dentist Jesse Mlotha said it was important for the communities to know the preventive measures of some diseases which come due to oral health problems.
"Diseases like cavities in children, mouth and throat diseases which come because of lack of best practices to clean teeth and mouth cause a great threat to somebody’s quality of life like absence of school, tooth loss, dysfunction and poor appearance, among others," she said.
She added that tooth problems also could affect self-esteem, thereby contributing to nutritional problems by limiting the types of food somebody might take.
Although the Malawi government in collaboration with Colgate Palmolive introduced an Oral Health Programme in primary schools of the country, she said, there was still more that government needed to do like putting the same programmes in communities to sensitise the adult population.
Speaking in Lilongwe on Monday during the commemoration of National Oral Health Month, Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) Dentist Jesse Mlotha said it was important for the communities to know the preventive measures of some diseases which come due to oral health problems.
"Diseases like cavities in children, mouth and throat diseases which come because of lack of best practices to clean teeth and mouth cause a great threat to somebody’s quality of life like absence of school, tooth loss, dysfunction and poor appearance, among others," she said.
She added that tooth problems also could affect self-esteem, thereby contributing to nutritional problems by limiting the types of food somebody might take.
Although the Malawi government in collaboration with Colgate Palmolive introduced an Oral Health Programme in primary schools of the country, she said, there was still more that government needed to do like putting the same programmes in communities to sensitise the adult population.
Malawi parliament to establish own radio station
Malawi Parliament will next year (2009) establish its own radio station to broadcast live deliberations of the House and other pertinent issues concerning parliament, APA learnt here Monday.
Parliament spokesperson Leonard Mengezi told APA during an interview in Lilongwe on Monday that setting up the radio station was part of the country\’s parliamentary reform programme and strategic plans launched last year.
"We would like the voices of the people in the country to be heard on the radio through their parliamentarians," he said.
He said the radio would have a great impact to the development of the nation, especially in constituent development.
Malawi Parliament’s deliberations were covered live by the state-owned radio Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) but it stopped airing the proceedings this year due to lack funding by the same parliament.
Parliament spokesperson Leonard Mengezi told APA during an interview in Lilongwe on Monday that setting up the radio station was part of the country\’s parliamentary reform programme and strategic plans launched last year.
"We would like the voices of the people in the country to be heard on the radio through their parliamentarians," he said.
He said the radio would have a great impact to the development of the nation, especially in constituent development.
Malawi Parliament’s deliberations were covered live by the state-owned radio Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) but it stopped airing the proceedings this year due to lack funding by the same parliament.
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