Guardians at Karonga District Hospital have turned the guardian shelter’s kitchen into a bedroom due to lack of space in the hostels.
In an interview on Wednesday, a guardian Judith Mchawi from Senior Chief Mwilang’ombe claimed lack of sleeping space in hostelsw at the guardian shelter forced them to seek refuge in the kitchen, which has a halfway wall and no door panel.
She said: “We use this structure as our sleeping place due to limited space in the guardian shelter. The room is not safe though because there is no fence around these premises and at night, thieves trouble us.”
“Again , the place does not have electricity such that whenever it rains we don’t sleep because the structure was built to serve as kitchen with a half wall to average way for smoke”.
However, in an interview, Karonga district director of health and social services, David Sibale said even though their role is to ensure observance of sanitation and hygiene at the facility, they also recommended to the district council authorities and the area’s legislators on what needs to be done at the facility.
He said: “There are a number of recommendations that we made to the council on what is needed to be done at the facility to make sure there is hygiene and sanitation, security and enough space for sleeping.”
“For example, recently we recommended for additional hostels due to high congestion, rubbish pit, a borehole and toilets to make sure that there is no out break of waterborne diseases and other non-communicable diseases”.
In a separate interview, Karonga District Council chairperson Berlium Msukwa said his office is looking into the matter.
