The Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has given President Lazarus Chakwera a 21 days ultimatum to solve current economic hardships the country is going through, failing which, the group will call for national wide demonstrations on 7th December.
During press briefing held on Tuesday in Lilongwe, HRDC deputy chair Michael Kaiyatsa demanded Government to take action by fix fuel electricity problems within 21 days.
“for about two months now, the country has been experiencing incessant fuel shortages. Filling stations are dry, food prices have shot above the roof and there is hardly any forex on the market to enable any sensible business to operate. People can no longer travel due to the unavailability of fuel. If they do, then they have to pay excessively higher fares. In public hospitals, ambulances have no fuel to ferry the sick to health facilities which has led to preventable deaths. All in all we hope that the Chakwera government will live up to it’s promise to eradicate the electricity and fuel problems by the end of December” he said
Kaiyatsa was also concerned with the rising new cases of corruption, fraud and the theft which HRDC also demands President Dr Lazarus Chakwera to act quickly.
“Recently there have been revelations of a dirty mess of the country’s flagship Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) where K750 million was paid to a butchery in the UK. Before this matter has been resolved, another shameful scandal was reported where K112.5 million worth of maize belonging to NFRA was stolen. This is not withstanding a myriad of unresolved corruption and theft scandals, including the K17 billion COVID-19 funds, so we expect the president to act and makesure that the people who are looting public resources are brought to account”
He further mentioned issues of poor Governance, complicity in illegal activities and impunity that need to be addressed.
The second boss of the grouping has also asked Government to reshuffle his cabinet and replace underperforming cabinet ministers with new ones.
Kaiyatsa has therefore asked Malawians to take responsibility again and demand for accountability from the government they ushered into power in 2020.
