Masasa residents refusing to relocate
Residents of Masasa Ward in Mzuzu have threatened that they will not cooperate with the relocation exercise that the Mzuzu City Council is implementing.
The city council is in the process of relocating residents that are in flood prone areas to the new site that the council has found.
This follows Vice President Saulos Chilima’s directive last year that the city council should find new area upland to move the residents. The advice came on the back of flash floods that affected scores of people in the area.
But councillor for Masasa Ward Yona Mkandawire said the residents are not happy with the registration process that the council has conducted.
Mkandawire said names of the beneficiaries have been duplicated, raising fear that some council officials want to benefit from the affected families.
He said people who were affected by floods last year are not appearing in the new list of the beneficiaries and the residents have called on the council to restart the whole process of registering people.
“What has happened is that the council’s secretariat came with their officers to register people, but they selected people randomly,” said Mkandawire.
“People are not happy with the situation because the secretariat has been used, cheating people saying they are going to relocate us yet they also want to get some plots,” added Mkandawire.
However, Chief Executive Officer for Mzuzu City Council Mcloud Kadam’manja said some residents are refusing to relocate because of their beliefs.
“As city council, we indeed found a new site, but now the challenge is that residents within Masasa are not willing to move. They are saying they do not have resources.
“Secondly people still believe that Masasa falls within Nkhata Bay. Each time you tell them to move to another piece of land they insist they want to be relocated within Masasa area,” he said.
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