With the protests over rising cost of living taking place in Mzuzu today, the Concerned Citizens patron Bon Kalindo has said if government does not act on their demands within a week, his group will take the demonstrations to districts and close borders.
The group wants government to ensure that prices of basic commodities such as cooking oil,
soap, sugar, fuel and water tariffs are reduced within that period.
But government, through Information Minister Gospel Kazako, has said Kalindo’s group will not succeed in provoking it because Capital Hill believes in peace and not confrontation, as evidenced by its extension of an olive branch.
Speaking during a media briefing in Mzuzu yesterday morning, Kalindo, while appreciating that government invited the group for dialogue, said the meeting did not achieve much apart from reduction of toll gate fees, which he argued, still remain high.
He claimed people in remote areas of the country face rising costs of goods on a daily basis, and that the reduction in toll gate fees would not translate to improvement in the socioeconomic being of such people; hence, the need to deal with prices of basic goods.
Kalindo was flanked by, among others, former UTM Party deputy secretary general Levy Luwemba, who dumped the party after Kalindo resigned as national director of youth.
“We would like government to appreciate that we gave them room for negotiations and they called us, but when we put everything on the table, we were not convinced. So we want them to do the needful. We are not fighting them, the people they are governing are suffering.
“We will close the borders and conduct protests in all the districts for them to understand the magnitude of the suffering of Malawians.” But Kazako said: “We opened dialogue with them because we have confidence that the issues they were raising deserved government’s ear and attention. We are yet to hear from them on how demonstrating in the streets of the country will bring solutions in the absence of a round-table dialogue.
“We are avoiding a temptation of believing that there is more to these demonstrations than the issues they tabled. We are still standing for dialogue. On closing of borders, we advise them to consult the laws of this country.”
Mzuzu City Council spokesperson McDonald Gondwe said they had a preparatory meeting on Wednesday in the Council’s Chamber, where they cleared them to proceed with the protests.
The first two protests held in Blantyre and Lilongwe were characterised by destruction and looting of goods worth millions of kwacha
