MHC tenants protest 43% one-off rental hike
Tenants of the Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) have expressed discomfort with an overall adjustment of 43 percent in house rentals to be implemented in full, contrary to initial suggestions to phase its roll out.
The tenants wondered why MHC has decided to hike the house rentals at once effective September 1 this year.
Besides, the tenants also argue that the adjustments do not reflect the rising cost of living in the country.
In an interview yesterday, MHC Tenants Association spokesperson Goodnews Mphande said the tenants might resort to staging a protest as they did in June when they planned to obtain a court injunction restricting MHC from effecting the 48 percent increment.
He said: “As an association, we did not receive any formal communication from Malawi Housing Corporation. The only thing they [MHC] did was to issue a press release whereby they indicated that every tenant will receive a letter. As tenants, we feel we may go back to the rental protests.”
Mphande also observed downward adjustments of rentals of between K300 and K1 800 in some areas whereas some houses have been adjusted upwards with more than K5 000 did not make sense and creates disparities.
However, a tenant (name withheld) from Nkolokosa Township in Blantyre, whose one bed-roomed house has been hiked from K12 000 to K20 000, yesterday said it was time the issue was put to rest.
Said the tenant: “In the first place, we indeed had to protest because the 48 percent did not match with what we earn. But I guess that protesting now will just make matters worse.”
Commenting on the matter, MHC spokesperson Ernestina Lunguzi said it was up to individual tenants to make calculations based on the overall average and the initial rent remitted to the corporation.
She said every MHC tenant has so far been communicated to.
Said Lunguzi: “Our houses have different rates, so I wouldn’t say they have been reduced with such an amount as the tenants are saying. Rather, I can only give the overall average which in the first place was 48 percent, and has now been reduced to an overall average of 43 percent.”
In July, MHC announced that it would implement new house rentals for its units nationwide, a month after suspending implementation of a planned rental increase with an average of 48 percent supposedly to be put into effect on July 1.
MHC justified its decision to raise rentals by an average of 48 percent to raise funds for maintenance works, construction of more houses and to meet escalating costs.
MHC chief executive officer Eunice Napolo also told journalists the corporation has in recent years been surviving on sales of plots and not on house rentals revenue; hence, did not have enough funds to maintain its houses.
Boasting of about 6 000 housing units across the country, MHC is a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament in 1964 and is wholly owned by the Malawi Government.
Under the MHC Act of 1964 the corporation is empowered to construct houses, develop plots and maintain existing houses and plots. It is also within the Corporations’ mandate to put up buildings other than dwelling houses and also to dispose of any structure which it has either built or procured.
