Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining, Atupele Muluzi on Friday said his ministry is made up of special entities for economic growth.
Speaking in Lilongwe during a ministerial dialogue with staff members within the ministry, Muluzi said the country’s economic growth depends on natural resources, energy and mining.
“The officers have worked hard as a team in the year ending and managed to focus on the vision of the ministry and in 2015 we will make sure that the culture of integrity is there as issues of transparency and accountability would be looked into,” said Muluzi.
He added that the ministry has strong desires and commitment in discharging their duties and encouraged them to use the funding allocated prudently to accomplish the desired work.
Speaking earlier, Director of Energy, Gideon Nyirongo said the linkage between energy and economic development is well known world-wide and countries that have developed are those that use greatest quantities of energy per capita.
“The Government has prioritized energy generation and supply among priority areas for sustainable economic development.
“The total installed power generation capacity is 350 MW against unsuppressed demand of around 450 MW and the demand is projected to grow to 750 MW by 2015 and more than 1000 MW by 2020,” explained Nyirongo.
He said to improve the energy sector there is diversification of source of electricity generation and there are constructing a Coal Fired Power Plant at Kammwamba in Neno which is expected to produce 300 megawatts and plans are at advanced stage.
Nyirong also said there are working on Hydro Power Projects on Tedzani which will be producing about 22 megawatts and feasibility studies have been done, the project to start in June 2015 and completed in 2018 through a grant from Japan.
Director of mines, Charles Kaphwiyo said Malawi as a country lacks a culture of mining and that the expectation of people is high than what is explored.
“There is a need to sensitize the rural communities on issues of mines; it is not all the time that when a company is trying to identify or explore mines it will do that.
“There are techniques challenges since some of the mines cannot be explored due to quantity or machines needed to use when exploring,” said Nyirongo.
He added that support infrastructure is not complete as good roads are needed to transport mines to the market areas and insufficient power produced in the country also affects the exploration of mines as there is need for high use of power.
Deputy Director of Forest, Thomas Makhambera said the department has managed to produce more than 60 million trees on both customary land, plantation and forest reserve areas.
He also said this year the department is planning to plant about 60 million trees across the country during the tree planting season which is from December 15 2014 to April 15 2015.
Makhambera said on capacity building the department has trained 770 workers on how to control bush fires.
