Four days after Vice-President Saulos Chilima and eight others perished in a military plane crash in Mzimba, there are growing calls for government to institute an independent inquiry into the incident.
Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) on Tuesday also called for thorough investigations into the plane crash in Nthungwa Hills on the Viphya Plateau.
Governance analyst Henry Chingaipe in an interview yesterday said any investigation must be carried out by independent experts, preferably foreign ones to help address the conspiracy theories some Malawians are making about the plane accident.
He said Chilima’s plane crash should be handled with the seriousness it deserves; hence, the call for fully independent foreign air crash investigators such as those from the United Kingdom or United State of America (USA).
He said: “We need proper investigations facilitated by government, but it should be independent.
“If the independent technical report will match with some of the conspiracy theories we are hearing, then it will lead to further investigations. But, as a country, we are so pathetically low on the State capacity on important issues like these.”
Posting on Facebook, private practice lawyer Khumbo Soko also noted that it is a standard practice in aviation that every plane crash is investigated.
He, thus, urged authorities to ensure that the investigation starts as soon as possible before evidence gets lost or compromised.
Said Soko: “Any suggestion that calls for an investigation are too early is obviously misplaced or just downright ignorance. These kinds of investigations must be led by people who know what they are doing and have experience.
“I have in mind the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board], a US federal government agency. We can ask for help.”
In an interview yesterday, Major General Ian Chirwa (Retired), a former Malawi Air Force commander, said he operated the ill-fated plane for over 30 years, but never encountered any major problem with it.
“These are German machines. It is a Dornier and I never had any major problem or incident on this aircraft. So, this tragic incident has really taken me down,” he said.
Commenting on the matter, Manfred Chaponda, a Malawian aeronautical engineer at Amac Aerospace in Basel, Switzerland, said there are a number of factors that need to be looked into that might have caused the plane crash.
He said, among others, mechanical failure, human error, weather conditions, bird strikes and sabotage or terrorism as well as deliberate acts to bring down the aircraft could be contributing factors.
“Utilising seatbelts, oxygen masks, life vests and other safety gear minimises the impact of the crash, but a thorough investigation is needed to establish what exactly caused this specific crash,” said Chaponda.
Malawi Defence Force (MDF) spokesperson Major Emmanuel Mlelemba said investigations into the plane crash will be communicated at an appropriate time.
“We will update the nation on the direction that is being taken. As MDF, we now have to work hand in hand with everyone who is available,” he said.
On whether the accident scene has been cordoned off to pave the way for investigations, Mlelemba questioned if it was appropriate that they give such details to the nation.
“You are asking us about simple military procedures. These are procedures, so we cannot tell the nation,” he said.
But addressing the media in Lilongwe yesterday, Minister of Information and Digitisation Moses Kunkuyu indicated that MDF has been directed to conduct the investigations along with the Department of Civil Aviation and others with expertise.
Bodies of Chilima and eight others were found in the mangled wreck of the Malawi Air Force flight number MAF T03 at Nthungwa in Viphya Plantation in Mzimba 24 hours due to bad weather.
Additional reporting by RALPH MVONA, Staff Reporter
