By Jarson Malowa
Sports lovers in Zomba and surrounding areas can now afford a smile after President Lazarus Chakwera opened Zomba Stadium in a ceremony that took place Thursday.
The 20,000-seater facility stands where Zomba Community Centre Ground was, with construction works commencing in 2017.
Chakwera described the stadium as a nice and magnificent structure which will change the face of the old capital once fully completed.
“My goals are focused on development, and it does not matter where this development goes as long as it is within Malawi. So the people of Zomba fully deserve development just like all Malawians wherever they are,” he said.
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Local Government, Unity and Culture Minister, Richard Chimwendo Banda, said the decision to open the stadium after the second phase was arrived at to quench sports’ lovers thirst after years of missing out on action due to the construction works.
Chimwendo Banda described the project as a huge achievement for Chakwera.
“People of Zomba are also Malawians and they have every right to enjoy football here. The president has been putting money into this stadium for the past three years for the project to reach this far. This is beautiful stadium,” he said.
Chimwendo Banda indicated that TNM Super League will soon return to Zomba, with Ekhaya FC requesting to have the stadium as their home ground. We hope Red Lions will also return to the top-flight league next season so that we have more matches here,” he said Chimwendo.
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Lions are currently competing in the NBS Bank National Division League where they are leading.
Zomba City Council Engineer, Martin Kumbani, said support from the government helped them to revise the stadium’s capacity from 5,000 to 20,000.
“The project had three phases. We started with phase one and we have now completed phase two which has cost us over K4.5 billion. We are planning to speed up construction works so that we finish phase three,” Kumbani said.
