By Vincent Gunde
The Inua Advocacy, an organization advocating for refugee rights in Malawi, has released a documentary carrying refugees and asylum seekers concerns as well as people who were working for them at Mgona township in Lilongwe.
In the documentary, the refugees and asylum seekers relocated to Dzaleka Camp in Dowa are praying for government assistance following their relocation claiming that they lost all of their businesses to the government and are helpless for the government to listen to their cries.
One woman is heard crying to the government that they did not know that the businesses they were doing will be forfeited to the government following their relocation to Dzaleka Refugee Camp saying now, she is failing to send her children to school.
The woman said she has now been reduced to a beggar begging from well wishers food and other everyday life needs, narrating that she was self-reliant and able to provide to her family members all of their needs.
“For all the years we have been in Malawi, government did not tell us that the businesses we were doing did not belong to us but to it,” said the woman.
In Lilongwe, people of Mgona township and surrounding areas are all speechless as their source of earning a living were relocated to Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa, women are being seen carrying winnowers in their hands searching for jobs but to no avail.
Mai Esnath Kaliza said with the money she was receiving from winnowing agricultural produces of owners of containers, she was able to feed her seven children and able to pay Development Fund at Chipala LEA School where they are learning.
“I cannot take K7000 to pay Development Fund for each of my children at Chipala School, buying a 5L pail of maize at K4000,” She narrated the story while tears flowing out through her cheeks.
James Mpotazingwe, who was working as a loader of bags into the containers at Mgona, claimed that theft and burglary cases have increased at Mgona and surrounding areas because government killed their business of making money.
Mpotazingwe said the youth have nothing to do following their relocation exercise of their bosses to Dzaleka and many have resorted into excessive beer drinking and engaging in criminality activities a thing which was not there with the presence of their masters.
“Four of us are at Maula Prison arrested for committing various crimes ranging from theft, burglary and malicious damages,” he said.
