President Lazarus Chakwera has dared members of the newly-appointed Commission of Inquiry into the Plane Crash that killed Vice-President Saulos Chilima and eight others on June 10 2024 to do a thorough job.
Speaking during the swearing-in at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe yesterday, the President said he expected the commission to establish facts surrounding the accident.
Said Chakwera: “I didn’t want to put together a commission that was going to lead to us in appointing another commission of inquiry in future because the initial one did not do a good job.”
High Court of Malawi Judge Jabbar Alide, who is chairing the 19-member team, said the commission will draw a clear road-map on how it will conduct its business at its first meeting
scheduled immediately after the swearing-in event yesterday.
He said based on the Commission of Enquiries Act, the commission’s role is to look at the sequence of events that led to the accident and make recommendations to the President to ensure that similar events do not happen in future.
“We depend on information from those who believe that are in the know. Please do come forward and together we deliver a good report about this,” said Alide.
He also encouraged all people who have information they believe will be useful in the probe to contact the commission.
Chilima, former first lady Patricia Shanil Dzimbiri and seven others were aboard a Malawi Defence Force plane Dornier 228 MAFT03 from Lilongwe to Mzuzu Airport died when it crashed at Nthungwa in Viphya Plantation.
The other victims were Chilima’s guard commander Lukas Kapheni, aide-de-camp Chisomo Chimaneni, medical officer Dan Kanyemba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy chief of protocol Abdul Lapukeni, Colonel Owen Sambalopa who was the pilot-in-command, Major Flora Selemani who was the second pilot and aircraft engineer Major Wales Aidin.
Since the crash, there have been calls from the civil society, politicians, Chilima’s family and widow, Mary, for government to institute a commission to look into the tragedy.
In June, three experts from Germany started investigations to determine the probable cause of the Dornier 228 aircraft crash.
The experts included one from General Atomics, a company that has taken over the manufacturing of Dornier 228s, while the other two were from the German Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation
