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Malawians poorer one year on—HRDC

The Human Right Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has scored the Tonse Alliance administration, which has been in office for one year, poorly in areas of economy, job creation, corruption and nepotism.

In a statement issued yesterday titled ‘One year on, Tonse turns hope into despair, with no plan in sight’ the group observed that Malawians are poorer now than they were a year ago and the current administration seems not to have any plan in sight to bail out its struggling citizens.   

Trapence (R): The administration has failed to live up to the expectations

However, HRDC scored the Tonse administration highly in rule of law, food security, access to information, reforms and management of Covid-19.

The statement signed by HRDC national chairperson Gift Trapence and national coordinator Luke Tembo reads in part: “The administration has failed to live up to the expectations of Malawians with visible signs of economic misdirection, ever rising unemployment and the cost of essential goods resulting into inflation that has left Malawians poorer than they were a year ago.

“Worse still, the Tonse Alliance administration does not seem to have a recovery plan in place to alleviate the dire poverty in our midst.”

HRDC faulted government for indecisiveness in the fight against corruption and for failing to control the rising cost of essential commodities on the market.

The statement further reads: “One just has to look at the foreign currency market to understand how Malawians are worse off one year later. The rapid depletion of forex has made the Malawi kwacha to depreciate by around 10 percent over the past 12 months, contributing sharply to the rising cost of living and general economic pain Malawians are feeling right now.

“Meanwhile, the administration sits on the largest budget deficit on record amid a piling public debt on the back of largely unproductive spending.”

HRDC described as “a hoax” the promise by Tonse Alliance administration to create one million jobs in the first 12 months, adding that the disbursement of loans to youths and other micro-entrepreneurs under the National Economic Empowerment Fund (Neef) is political.

On corruption, HRDF faulted Chakwera for not doing enough on the plunder of K6.2 billion Covid -19 funds, failure to audit K17.2 billion and more than K300 billion in Covid-19 donor aid as well we as reports of corruption at the National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) and the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority(Mera) over fuel deals.

In an interview, political analyst Mustapha Hussein agreed with HRDC’s analysis, but added that government should not take credit for operationalising ATI and ICC, arguing that it is what is expected of government to do.

“Government needs to do more to get the masses out of poverty,” he said.

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