A Scottish Charity has provided shelter to 56 women in Malawi. According to news that appeared in the scottish paper Press and Journal, the hostel was presented to people of Mfera area.
The charity which is called Famine Relief for Orphans in Malawi (From Scotland) works to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in the African country.
Previously, the charity received royal recognition from Princess Anne for its flood relief efforts after a devastating cyclone ravaged parts of Southern Malawi in April.
Volunteers have now completed work on a £40,000 hostel for young girls in the African country, in an effort to provide them with a safe space to stay while they attend school.
A total of 56 women have moved into the Girls Hostel at Mfera School in Southern Malawi – benefiting from a safe and comfortable home to live in while completing their studies.
Charity chairman Lewis Taylor said: “This facility gives 56 girls from outlying villages somewhere safe to stay during the school term.
“Most of these girls come from very poor families who cannot afford to pay for their daughter’s accommodation.
“They will be able to stay in the hostel free of charge allowing them to get an education which would otherwise be denied to them.”
The next step for the Inverurie-based charity is to raise funds to sponsor the girls so they can afford food and school equipment.
Mr Taylor added: “We will sponsor five girls initially but hopefully that can be more in the future.
“It costs only about £40 a term to sponsor each girl so any support is appreciated.
“We have really loyal support from people in Inverurie – we can’t thank them enough.”
Reporting by Kirsten Robertson for The Press and Journal
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services has confirmed that fees for passports will be hiked.
The fees are currently pegged at K48, 500 for normal processing which takes 21 days, K58, 500 for urgent processing which takes five days and K68, 500 for express which takes 24 hours.
Director General of the Department, Masauko Medi, said the current fee for passport processing is below the cost of production of the document.
Minister Nicholas Dausi
He said this when Minister of Homeland Security, Nicholas Dausi, toured the Immigration Offices in Blantyre over the weekend.
Medi said the current fee—was arrived at when the kwacha was trading at K480 to the dollar.
Medi said the standard cost of processing and producing a passport is at $100. This means that if the fees are to be adjusted, a normal process for a passport would shoot to around K72, 000.
He said there was no need for the government to keep subsidising the document.
Medi said with the introduction of national identity cards, a passport is no longer a need for identification in the access of services but it is for those wishing to travel outside the country.
“Can a mere local person want to travel? No. If he wants to travel, then he should make a proper plan and save enough money [to acquire a passport]. Otherwise, with the national ID in place, Malawians don’t need the passport as a form of identification,” he said.
In the past, one needed a passport or a driver’s license as identification documents in banks and other facilities.
But Consumers Association of Malawi Executive Director, John Kapito, blames the Immigration Department chief for suggesting that a passport is a preserve for the well-to-do.
“It is wrong to attach the price of a passport to few people who have money and can go outside [of the country] to have fun. Small scale businesspeople need passports to conduct cross-border trade.
“Again, sometimes, poor people go out of the country to receive medical treatment. The government should be putting in place measures to ensure that the passport is a document that is easily accessed by its citizens,” he said.
United Kingdom-based Malawian comedian Daliso Chaponda has one more thing to smile about after his radio show got nominated for the prestigious Rose D’or awards.
The event to announce the winners will take place on December 1 at Kings Place in London.
In an announcement on the awards’ website www.rosedor.com, Chaponda’s radio programme Citizen of Nowhere, which airs on BBC UK, has been nominated in the audio entertainment category.
Chaponda’s show is up against five other radio shows, namely It Burns that airs on 7 Digital in Australia, Griefcast that airs on BBC, UK, Documentary on One that airs on RTE radio, Ireland, Brexit that airs on BBC UK and Belgium and 13 Minutes to the Moon on BBC World Service.
Daliso Chaponda
Reacting to the nomination on Wednesday, Chaponda took to his social media pages to celebrate.
He wrote: “My radio show has been nominated for a Rose D’or. Very excited. This was written with lots of research, banging of my head against the wall, hyperventilating from Carl Cooper for my never meeting deadlines and thereafter brilliant editing, intervention on episode 3 series 1 by Gary Delaney which led to the best sketch of both series.”
Chaponda then paid tribute to all members of his team for their support in the production of the series.
“I am so glad it [the radio show] got nominated. Thanks all. Now I need to dry clean my tux,” he added.
Chaponda is an all rounder entertainer who rose to fame after reaching the finals of Britain’s Got Talent television show.
His radio show Citizen of Nowhere first aired on BBC UK in May 2018. The second series started last month.
According to www.rosedor.com, the Audio Entertainment category in which Chaponda is nominated is taking place for the first time.
Awards chairperson Sofia Helin said the nominees were voted for by 60 international judges made up of media industry professionals.
Helin said: “The shortlist for The Rose d’Or awards this year is brilliantly diverse, and we’re delighted to see so many international programmes shortlisted which reflect the outstanding and varied output of entertainment programming we have seen in the last year across the globe. Our congratulations to all nominated.”
The Rose d’Or (Golden Rose) is an international awards festival in entertainment broadcasting and programming.
The Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) will unveil new sponsor for the Queens Tuesday afternoon in Blantyre. According to NAM President, Khungekile Matiya, the sponsor is “coming along with a good package for the Queens”.
Khungekile said the Queens, who finished second at the recent Africa Netball Championship in South Africa, deserve better sponsorship package and hoped to secure more sponsorships for Under 20 and 21 netball leagues.
Malawian legal scholar based at the at South Africa’s Cape Town University, Professor Danwood Chirwa has stated that the testimony by Malawi Congress Party (MCP) IT expert and witness in the on-going elections case, Daud Suleman, on Friday was “hugely devastating”.
Professor Danwood Chirwa: Suleman managed to turn the case on its head at this point Suleman: IT expert who has given ‘devastating’ testimony
He said Suleman’s simulation in court on how Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) computerised election result management system (RMS) was allegedly breached by a ‘ghost’ operator to change the results of the presidential elections in favour of incumbent Peter Mutharika “managed to turn the case on its head at this point” saying “the burden [to prove] has now shifted”.
IT Guru – Daud Suleman
Said Chirwa: “He so powerfully delivered his testimony with the aid of simulation and demonstration, that he left the judges with a clear understanding of what happened.”
Chirwa said Suleman had demonstrated that the IT system which the commission used was “insecure, was manipulatable and was, in fact, manipulated.”
He pointed out that Suleman demonstrated his expertise by arranging and explaining the simulations and their application so effortlessly.
“He is mega credible,” Chirwa said a witness to second petitioner Lazarus Chakwera.
Suleman further provided evidence to back a theory that the results were not credible.
The law professor said Suleman has shown that the IT system which the electoral body used was insecure, manipulatable and was in fact manipulated.
“Reliance on it to pronounce the results, he labored to show, affected the integrity of the entire electoral process and final outcome.
“Expert evidence is a unique piece of evidence. The court has to accept it in its totality unless the opposing party produces its own expert to impeach it,” pointed out Chirwa.
Attorney General Kalekeni Kaphale, who is representing MEC, said MEC’s legal team said the public will hear its response when cross examination starts this Monday afternoon.
But Chirwa said the witness has set “a very high bar” for the respondent’s expert, who has to prove that the IT system the commission used was impregnable and that it was not in fact breeched.
He said it is always a tough job cross examining expert witnesses.
The law professor said if MEC decide to take Suleman head on, the cross examination could bolster his claims as it can allow him further opportunities to explain the problems with the MEC’s system.
“The wise thing could be to cut the cross short and let MEC’s own expert counter the witness later if they have an equally credible and knowledgeable expert,” he said.
Chirwa said there has been objective material evidence so far as the petitioners have labored to paint the picture that a considerable number of tally sheets at streams and polling stations were altered, that some were not signed by monitors, that duplicates were used. And that they have shown that the IT platform from which the results were declared lacked integrity.
“Much of the response to the first line of the petitioners’ case has been to concede that these irregularities happened. What those of us outside court can’t work out is what these irregularities translate to in terms of their impact on the result. The commission has practically admitted all these irregularities but has been trying to explain them away by trying to argue that the altered or duplicate sheets were signed by monitors or that their results match other data, or shifting the blame to monitors..” he noted.
Chakwera’s lead lawyer Modecai Msisha said Suleman, who returns to the witness stand this Monday, had demonstrated clearly how the elections were manipulated, saying the demonstration was “very firm and specific” on its evidence.
