No lullabies on passport crisis; plan for hunger

Two things President Lazarus Chakwera and his administration must deal with as a matter of urgency. The perennial passport production crisis and the looming hunger in the country.

Chakwera’s detractors usually accuse him of taking too long to act on critical issues requiring his urgent action. The current passport production crisis started on January 24 2024 when the Immigration and Citizenship Department stopped printing passports, citing technical interruptions at its passport issuance office. So it has been one full month, and no solution in sight.  

But we can all attest to the fact that the current crisis is only one of a myriad of challenges the Passport and Citizenship office has been facing for a very long time. And over the years the problem has gotten worse. The Malawi passport is one of the most difficult documents to get even after paying for Express Service at a whopping K160 000 for a 48-pages ordinary passport. Processing times for routine applications are 6-8 weeks, and expedited applications are 2-3 weeks. But thousands of applicants have been waiting for months to get the document even after paying for the Express Service. Unless you are connected, don’t hallucinate that you can get the passport within the normal processing times. It is no longer a secret that an applicant has to grandiosely ‘oil’ the process to get a passport.

The Tonse Alliance administration, whose leaders promised to put this rot to an end once and for all if they get into government, has not only reengaged on the promise but accelerated it.

My conclusion is that when there is a crisis, no administration worth its salt will sit on the fence, or look away, unless there is a windfall for it from the outcome of the mess.

Suffice to say the problems are detrimental to the country’s development as they negatively affect the lives of many Malawians. A passport is not a medal you get just to keep in the locker. A passport is a tool and a lifeline for thousands of Malawians who conduct cross-border businesses. Failing to ‘clear the rubble’ as the Tonse leaders enchantingly used to woe the voters during campaign is playing with people’s lives.

The President should take the story about hackers shutting down the passport issuing system he has been lullabying us to the kindergarten. May be there it will excite some. It is buffoonery, to say the least.

It does not rain but pours for Malawi. As the country is struggling to feed about 4.4 million hungry souls following the damage to crops caused by Cyclone Freddy last year, another year of hunger is knocking on the door.

The maize crop in most parts of the Southern Region and some areas in the Central Region is scorching under the oven-heat El Nino induced weather conditions. It will be another terrible year. Agriculture officials have not come with figures for the whole country, save for Machinga Agriculture Development Division (ADD) and Mwanza. You are talking about over 47 000 hectares in one ADD only.

But my conservative estimation is that over half the population of the Southern Region and many parts of Ntcheu will harvest very little. The hungry mouths in the 2024/25 financial year will surpass if not double those of the previous year. Government should prepare to feed upwards of 8 million Malawians not only during the lean period—usually from November to March—but for the whole year. I am not being alarmist. This is the situation on the ground. It is bad, very band.

There are those who took loans for farm inputs. Apart from looking for money to buy food for their consumption, the heavier load on their shoulders will be how to repay the loans after the crop failure. Government has a duty to help out such people.

We are sending our youths  to work in farms in Israel, a country with more than half of its territory occupied by true desert or near desert.

Israel does not beg for food as we do. Yet we have vast water bodies from perennial rivers and Lake Malawi which cover the whole length of Malawi from Chitipa to Nsanje. But half of the year we have to beg for food. We are unable to plan about how to harness these water bodies to make us food self-sufficient.

As I write this a day before Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Simplex Chithyola Banda of the SiSoSa Economics presents his maiden budget in Parliament, my hope and prayer is that he has put the over 8 million food insecure people in his economic blue print.