Police in Blantyre have arrested two men for allegedly stealing some bags of relief maize which the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) in collaboration with Blantyre City Council was distributing to families affected by hunger.
The two, whose identities were not available by press time, were among the people helping to offload the maize from trucks at MDC Stadium in Blantyre where the 2024/25 Lean Season Food Insecurity Response Programme food distribution exercise was taking place.
Their arrests followed a malpractice observed by Vice- President Michael Usi who presided over the distribution exercise and a tip off from one of the journalists that the suspects were taking some of the maize outside the stadium.
The police and Usi’s security detail followed the matter and apprehended the two suspects.
In an earlier interview, Usi warned officers handling the relief maize distribution exercise not to take advantage of the hunger situation to defraud the poor.
He said: “We are talking about hunger; we are talking about people who have feelings and are going through the pain of hunger. Some of the maize, evidently, is being stolen and some people are selling the maize.
“So, what we are saying is let us be humans, these people are going through the pain of hunger.”
In a separate interview, Blantyre City Council chief executive officer Denis Chinseu said the council encountered several chal lenges from beneficiary identification, a situation that forced the distribution exercise delay in the city.
“We have done some shake ups in terms of the team that was responsible for logistics of this distribution process.
“So, we believe that with this shake-up, things will be okay and no one is going to complain about the process,” he said.
About 2 400 households from the city’s 23 wards were expected to receive the relief maize yesterday. They are among the people that were affected by Cyclone Freddy and El Nino weather conditions.
For the past week, Usi has been monitoring the relief maize distribution conducted by both Dodma and World Food Programme in the Southern Region.
