Chakwera to change working hours

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presidential candidate Lazarus Chakwera said his party’s administration will change working hours from 7.30am to 8.30am to give workers more time to attend to their domestic affairs.

In his address yesterday to a campaign rally at Njamba in Blantyre in the run up to the May 21 2019 Tripartite Elections, he also pledged to demolish Kamuzu Stadium and replace it with a 6000-seater international conference centre.

Further, standing on a ‘Chakwera Hi 5’ slogan, the MCP president said an MCP administration would strive to provide servant leadership, promote unity, prosperity, rule of law and end corruption.

He said: “Our pledge is to change the time people start work by delaying it with an hour so as to give chance to workers to carry out some household responsibilities such as preparing children for school. That way we will deal with the problem of people arriving at work late thereby increasing productivity.

“We plan to construct a modern stadium here at Njamba which shall replace the old Kamuzu Stadium.”

Njamba Freedom Park is already earmarked for a new national stadium which Ministry of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development said is at design stage.

Chakwera said the conference centre the MCP administration plans to construct at the present Kamuzu Stadium site would be named in honour of former president Joyce Banda, his electoral coalition partner who also attended the rally.

Besides Banda who withdrew her presidential bid to support Chakwera, former vice-president Khumbo Kachali of Freedom Party, also spoke in Chakwera’s favour.

In her address to the rally, Banda, who is president of People’s Party (PP), blamed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration for what she called “economic malaise and corruption”.

She said: “We are aware that there is too much rot in the current administration. A lot of money has been stolen from various public bodies. The end result is the failure to address challenges in key social sectors such as health where even pregnant women are lacking water.”

MCP’s Njamba rally was another test for the party’s popularity in the Southern Region, especially in Blantyre, where it performed poorly in the 2014 elections. MCP won a parliamentary seat in the Southern Region in a by-election in Nsanje Lalanje in October 2017, the first since the 1999 General Elections.

MCP officials said Chakwera will this week hold rallies in Mwanza, Neno, Mulanje, Phalombe and Chiradzulu.