CONGOMA NOT AMUSED WITH MAIZE CRISIS: MALAWIANS TOLD TO PRESSURIZE MUTHARIKA

Dust is refusing to settle on President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika’s administration as Council for Non-governmental Organizations (CONGOMA) has urged Malawians to exert pressure on him over the challenges the country is going through at the moment.

The call comes barely hours after delegates at the just ended Public Affairs Committee (PAC) in the commercial capital Lilongwe called for the immediate resignation of Mutharika, saying he has failed to run the affairs of the nation.

In a statement signed by CONGOMA Chairperson Macbain Mkandawire made available to Faceofmalawi, the body cited the acute shortage of Maize in ADMARC deports, high inflation rate and failure by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to provide adequate funding to District Hospitals as the reasons.

“We call upon government to stop the rhetoric and maize politics but immediately exert authority on NFRA to account for the maize they had in stock. Malawians need to know where the maize went. In addition, flood the markets with maize and let market forces take their rightful role (demand and supply tradeoffs) and crowd-out vendors’ market share,” reads the statement.

CONGOMA has urged President Mutharika to stop pushing the blame on vendors.

“Stop blaming venders for the maize woes when actually it’s the ADMARC officials that open their gates at a convenient odd hour and sell the maize to these venders,” said Mkandawire.

Coming to the economy, CONGOMA said the economic parameters of inflation, interest rates, exchange rate and employment are visibly in bad state.

“Food inflation has gone up from 2.9% in December 2010 to 29.2% by December 2015 (https://www.rbm.mw/statistics/inflationrates), exchange rate is on record high since time immemorial courtesy of the free floated Kwacha (RBM, 2016) and the cost of borrowing is too high to spur investment.

“No wonder the economy witnesses mushrooming of warehouses and shops that stock and sell imported goods than factories that could produce goods locally. Hence low employments of labour and capital on the market and some companies have started retrenching staff,” reads in part the statement
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CONGOMA urged the government to come out clear on economic policies which seem not to support production, growth and export trade.

CONGOMA calls upon Government to take these recommendations seriously because failure to see tangible movements on them shall force CSOs to invoke the CSO Grand Coalition and conduct District and National Demonstrations as our last resort so that together we can secure at least the future of our children.