Parliament delinks Aret, Chitedze from Luanar

Parliament on Wednesday passed a bill delinking Agriculture Research and Extension Trust (Aret) and Chitedze Research Station from Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) three years after their merger.

The House unanimously voted for the amendment bill, but some members of Parliament (MPs) questioned why government merged the institutions in the first place in 2011 under the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.

The two institutions were joined together with the then Bunda College of Agriculture that was delinked from the University of Malawi (Unima) and Natural Resources College (NRC) to form Luanar.

Speaking during the second reading of the bill, Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Allan Chiyembekeza defended the decision to delink the two institutions from Luanar, saying government recognised that there were more benefits for the institutions to be independent.

Aret was established in 1995 through a Trust deed with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development and Tama as a trust will operate under a public private partnership arrangement. n