Blantyre City can be a better place

One of the columns of the Weekend Nation, My Diary, titled ‘Bt City Officials Should Get A Life’ raised some valid points about Blantyre City. The column was published on March 30 2014.

I would not agree more that Blantyre City, one of southern Africa’s oldest urban centres, has indeed lost its glory. I want to expound on some of the aspects that the article left out, and my list is not exhaustive.

Compliance: A minister once bemoaned that service delivery in many councils is disturbed by a high percentage of city rates defaulters, and the figures mentioned for Blantyre City Council were in billions. I do not think the situation has changed much. But just imagine what K2 billion could do if put in good use.

Responsibility: While it is true that refuse is left uncollected in most areas, a great proportion of the litter that stink in our markets, streets, drainage, building corners, open spaces, streams is usually the making of citizens. It is a disappointment that there are some residents who see no issue littering in the streets and indeed nobody seems to care; for in a democratic Malawi, it is council’s responsibility.

People can urinate, defecate, throw factory waste just as cyclists or motorists chew sugar cane and throw the peels on the road without any remorse. In our markets, it is a common to see some businesspeople throwing litter right at their establishments, yet the council has dustbins and bin banks. And their customers, who actually are city residents, seem not to care either. Yet such conduct has associated health risks.

Security: People in Malawi, not just in Blantyre, survive on God’s grace. I will comment on the non-existence of security lights. From the bus terminal at Kamuzu Stadium down to HHI traffic lights (along Makata Road), the street lights were vandalised by residents. Makes one wonder whether they prefer darkness to light.

Each pole for the street lights costs at least K200 000. It is not people in Mbalachanda, Chipoka or Monkey Bay who vandalised the poles; it is Blantyre residents. This is the situation even on the Kamuzu Highway. How people manage to go away with these 300kg steel poles, is really a puzzle.

I understand the traffic lights at Kamba are not operational due to the works of some city residents who felt their selfish needs were more important than those of the rest of the city residents. Kamba, a busy place, also had its street lights vandalised on the part of the road between the trading centre and Mount Pleasant traffic lights. We have similar problems along the Limbe-Chigumula Road and Kandodo Corner Shop-Mbayani-Chirimba-Chileka Road, among others.

Fire Brigade: The question of poor services by the fire brigade is debatable. Personally, I take it that lack of awareness on when, how, where to seek the services and our different roles in the process, as lacking.

The proposal to open a centre at the Old Town Hall, which is central to Blantyre Business District, is the genesis of decentralisation of the fire brigade. But from the firefighting, rescue and safety lessons tapped from three separate sessions with the South African defence forces, the Malawi Lifesaving Society and the Fire Brigade, I feel there is a lot to learn for Malawian firefighters. I wish organisations could take a special interest in fire and safety lessons.

And I would not want to believe that the sojourn George Kasakula recently had, as indicated in the column, has made him fail to appreciate that this is Malawi where attention to such thing is minimal.

Service delivery in Blantyre City could be poor yes, but not all is lost, and I do not think we should wait for the city’s golden jubilee in 2016 to change things.

Kasakula has started the debate. What are the rest of the million residents of the city doing to promote a conducive environment for better service delivery in Blantyre which, in 1885, was the first place in Central Africa to earn a municipality status. God bless Blantyre!

—The author is an assistant security officer for Blantyre City Council, writing in his personal capacity