Sable Farming Football Club on Monday suspended its Head Coach Joseph Malizani and his assistant Shadrick Mpesi due to the team’s poor performance.
The team’s Technical Director Duncan Ngolanga confirmed of the development saying Executive Committee arrived at the decision after an evaluation of team’s performance which has seen it losing five games, drawing two with a single win from eight games it has played so far
.
Joseph Malizani
Ngolanga said this follows Sable’s back to back defeats to Moyale Barracks, Rumphi United, Blue Eagles and Mighty Mukuru Wanderers.
He said following Malizani’s suspension, the team has temporarily appointed McDonald Nginde Mtetemera as its caretaker until the end of the first round of TNM super league
He disclosed that Mtetemera’s task will be steering team out of the relegation.
The Chiradzulu-based side are currently on position 16 of the TNM supper league log table with five points from eight games, 21 points behind league leaders Blue Eagles, who have played ten games at this far.
Vice President Dr Saulos Chilima has called for swift action to end all forms of child labour in line with the Buenos Aires Declaration for action to accelerate efforts to end child labour by 2025 and 2030 for forced labour.
Dr Chilima said this on Sunday in Durban, South Africa when he addressed the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. The Vice President is representing President Dr Lazarus Chakwera at the conference.
“I believe that with the right mindset, we will achieve our goals. With the involvement and commitment of everyone, we can overcome child labour and forced labour decisively. Let there be no onlookers or bystanders. It’s action time,” he said.
Chilima with President Ramaphosa
Statistics produced jointly by International Labour Organisation and UNICEF show that globally about 160 million children were subjected to child labour at the beginning of 2020, with almost 9 million additional children at risk due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Chilima said Malawi is also not spared as an estimated two million children, aged between 5 and 15 are involved in child labour.
“We cannot, therefore, afford to watch and contemplate postponing ending child labour to a later date. Immediate action is required to reverse these trends,” Dr Chilima emphasised.
He informed the delegates that Malawi has ratified the relevant ILO Conventions including, all fundamental conventions, such as Convention 138 on the Minimum Age of entry into employment, as part of efforts to eliminate child labour.
“Corresponding legislation has been enacted in my country. We have the Employment Act aimed at regulating minimum standards of employment and prohibit child labour and forced labour,” he briefed the conference.
The Vice President said, more importantly, Malawi abolished the Tenancy Labour System due to its resemblance with forced labour or bonded labour, which he said was a crucial step towards the sustenance of the country’s efforts in the fight against child labour.
“Malawi makes an honest plea to the Member States here present, the entire UN system and other stakeholders, including the private sector – that with all our might, we should fight one war. A war against all unacceptable forms of work,” Dr Chilima pleaded.
He further said there was a need for quick interventions and policies to extend social protection coverage for children and their families; scale-up investment in free and good-quality education; promote the rights of children from birth to adulthood, and promote decent work for young people.
He then implored states and stakeholders to focus on interventions, especially in the Agriculture sector which accounts for 70% of child labour.
The conference will run from Sunday, 15 May to Friday 20 May 2022, however, Dr Chilima will return home on Tuesday, May 17 2022.
Malawian based exploration and mining company, African Minerals and Energy Holdings Ltd (African Energy) has confirmed its discovery of copper deposits at Bundi area in Karonga district, approximately 60km from Karonga Central Business District.
In a statement made available to us, African Minerals’ founder and Managing Director, Lumbani Mbale said the discovery will deliver significant financial benefits to the company and the economy at large. “We can now confirm we have discovered a sizeable vein of a deposit of high grade copper ore in the Nyika Plateau in the area of Chief Sanambi in Karonga district, after following some important geological information in the area. The development will make African Minerals the first company to open and operate a copper mine in Malawi once the operation starts”.
“We will in the meantime finalize environmental and social impact studies and seek government’s approval to start mining. All we have now is an Exploration License which government granted us recently”, Mbale said.
Managing Director Lumbani Mbale
Mbale added that although the company has already spent a significant amount of money to discover the mineral, the company will now embark on detailed further drilling in the area to explore further deposits, which are said to occur westwards. The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) enjoins mining companies to be open and accountable in the management of oil, gas and mineral resources. “It is in this spirit that we disclose this important discovery for the entire nation to know. At African Minerals, we exist to promote responsible and transparent mining to enhance national development and maximize shareholder value” added Mbale.
The company intends to process the mineral locally and export it as a finished product to generate the much needed forex and create jobs in the country. Malawi has for a long time relied on its neighboring countries like Zambia for processed copper for use in the manufacturing industry.
Copper(Cu)is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity used in electrical cabling. The current price of copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) is around $8500/Ton.
African Minerals was founded in 2017 by a Malawian born lawyer and businessman, Lumbani and his wife Ephridah Hawonga- Mbale, and has mineral tenements in Nthalire (coal), Lufira (coal), Mpata (coal) and Bundi (Copper and Limestone), covering approximately 300 Square Kilometers.
African Minerals also has significant controlling interests African Energy and Power Ltd (60%), African Rail Corporation (25%) and African Minerals & Energy Ltd in Zambia.
Despite being remote, Nsanje district is not out of site and reach of Chakwera’s Adminstration Development Agenda.
On May 12, 2022, Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation John Bande inspected two World Bank funded water projects that are being implemented in the southern border of the district.
The projects are expected to benefit 15000 households in the district.
In his speech, the Deputy Minister said Nsanje’s Chididi and Tengani are just examples of many areas in Malawi which have for the past years lagged behind in water and Sanitation infrastructure.
Hon John Bande, file Picture
He said President Lazarus Chakwera established the Ministry of Water and Sanitation to ensure that potable water is available to every Malawian by 2030 and that the Ministry is committed to make this achieved.
One of the project which is implemented under the Malawi Resilience and Drought Recovery Mitigation Project ( MRDRMP) aims at rehabilitating some of the gravity fed piped water supply schemes and drilling new boreholes in Nsanje, Thyolo, Neno, Chikwawa, Blantyre, Mwanza, Mangochi, Machinga, Balaka, Ntchewu, Nsanje and Zomba districts.
Clean water is vital for a healthy population. In Malawi, 80% of the population has access to an improved source of drinking water, but that leaves about 4 million people who still lack access to safe water.
Additionally, only six percent of the population has access to an improved sanitation facility. Poor sanitation practices and improper storage of drinking water commonly lead to waterborne illnesses such as cholera.
