Luchenza Council offices vandalised
Some angry vendors and members of the community have vandalised Luchenza Municipal Council offices in Thyolo District destroying property worth about K10 million.
The council’s Mayor, Henderson Spoon, said the incident happened on Friday afternoon after the council had gone out to sensitise the public about the impending national lockdown which has since been stopped.
The lockdown was scheduled to be effected on the midnight of April 18 as a measure of preventing the spread of Covid-19.
“People think the council has been given money that will be distributed to them, but as of now, Luchenza Municipal Council has not received coronavirus funds from the government. We have lost all the window panes and two computers,” Spoon said.
Luchenza Police Officer-in-Charge, Leonard Chipa, refused to shed more light on the vandalism apparently because doing so would disturb investigations that are currently underway.
On 14 April, the government announced that the country would go into a 21-day lockdown as a measure of preventing the spread of Covid-19 which has already claimed two lives.
The decision is being challenged by some citizens who are of the view that it will badly hit the poor and other vulnerable populations who survive on hand-to-mouth basis.
On Friday, vendors at Limbe and Ndirande markets in Blantyre stormed the streets in the city to protest the lockdown.
There over 2.3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide with over 160,000 deaths.
Mathews Kasanda is a journalist who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from University of Malawi (The Polytechnic).
In 2015, Media Institute of Southern Africa awarded him the Best Print Media Education Journalist of the Year accolade.
He joined Times Group Newsroom in September 2019.
