Miss Malawi waits for her prize package

Six months after the 2022 Miss Malawi was crowned, the beauty queen is yet to receive some of the prizes she was promised.

The prizes include K1 million cash, assumption of an ambassadorial role for some of the pageant’s partners, the possibility of having a full-time office and a fully-sponsored one-week holiday trip to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

But Miss Malawi Jescar Mponda, said in an interview she has only received K500 000 from the prize money and claimed she is yet to be advised on the dates for her Dubai trip. The trip was a pledge made by travel agent Blueberry Travel valued at K2.6 million.

In an interview yesterday, she said she is surprised by the turn of events, but understood that the organisers were working on limited resources.

Mponda said in her engagement with the pageant’s organisers, Alpha Arts, they indicated they have been let down by firms that did not honour their pledges.

“I don’t have precise dates of my travel or air tickets so I would rather say I don’t have much information about it. The organisers said they are waiting for Blueberry Travel to communicate on official dates,” said the queen.

Mponda said she is not distracted by the developments as she is focusing on leaving a legacy during her term of office. She said she trusts Alpha Arts, which she said pulled off a great event using minimal resources.

She said: “It was hard to keep on at first, but I had to look at why I participated in the pageant in the first place. The prizes aside, I did it because I had a goal. I don’t want to let down people who believed in me.”

In a separate interview, Alpha Arts director Tina Kendricks said the outcome is not one they had envisaged, but the failure by some of their partners to honour their pledges has left them in a situation where they are doing things on their own to fulfil the other pledges and clear their debts.

On the trip to Dubai, she said the team wants to ensure that when the queen leaves, she has enough pocket money for her survival. She said they have since engaged several companies to help with her pocket money.

“We have learnt a lot from our experience. This year we want to get the endorsement from the government before we start preparations for the pageant. With the government in the picture, I believe we will avoid some of these inconveniences,” she said.  

Blueberry Travels representative Rajesh Bhaiya said everything on their part is ready, but they are just waiting to be contacted by the organising team to set a date for her travel.

Bhaiya said: “Our pledge does not have a time-frame. Any day they feel ready they can contact us and we will set things in motion. Our offer still stands.”

Prior to the event, organisers of the pageant announced they had gone into partnership with a number of firms such as Blueberry Travel, Zodiak Broadcasting Station, Serendib Hotels and Resorts, and Optical Photography, among others.