After inspecting Marine barracks on 27 April 2021 the vice president Dr Saulos Chilima writes
Good evening,
The inspection of public projects in the Eastern Region started today with a visit to the construction of houses for our men in uniform at the Marine Unit of the Malawi Defence Forces in Monkey-Bay. Later we proceeded to visit the large scale Nkopola Irrigation Scheme which once completed will benefit close to 5,000 households on 800 hectares of irrigated land in Mangochi.
Challenges of erratic funding, price fluctuation, arrears to Contractors are hampering progress of implementation of these two projects. For instance, since 2013 the Contractor on the housing project for Marines has only managed to construct 43 houses. However they have assured us that with adequate funding the remaining works would be completed in four months.
This sad but hopeful story can also be told of the irrigation scheme which has over the years delayed due to low disbursement of project funds as well as facing a K19 million electricity bill.
Moving forward, to surmount these challenges I have called for better collaboration between the Contractor, the Ministry of Agriculture and communities among other stakeholder groups to realise the benefits of the investment.
On both projects, there is need to move with speed because the longer we delay the more we lose out on these opportunities to improve the welfare of Malawians. But as a government we can assure Malawians that we will address these challenges and ensure that the projects we are visiting are completed.
