By Burnett Munthali
Preamble
I was touched to the bones when I watched a short video clip in which Reverend Dr Kanyenda gave a moving sermon. He preached against the spirit of doing things slowly in public offices especially towards remuneration of death gratuity to family members. The pastor lamented that women from distant places were ignored on death benefit claims of their deceased bread winners which was inflicting a lot of pain.
Malawi is still living in the past when you look at the way some people conduct themselves especially in public offices and you even wonder as to what reforms this country is making and implementing. Even the song about Malawi 2063 is another wasted composition.
The Main Challenge
It is saddening News to learn that A 23-year-old woman from Mwanza, Hendrina Kamenya, is holding a vigil at the Accountant General’s office in Lilongwe in a bid to force authorities to give them death benefits pay, following the death of her father, who was a prison officer. What has the accountant general been doing for all these three years honestly? I mean this is another kind of torture, more than any other physical torture one would go through.
It is very disappointing that Hendrina says the delay has negatively affected her, as she was withdrawn from the Malawi University of Business and Applied Science (MUBAS) and is likely to lose another place at DMI University due to a lack of tuition fees. I would even recommend that responsible officers in the delay of death gratuity should be fired from their job because obviously no university would wait for tuition fees for three years. You can see, whoever is responsible for this action is actually killing the future of the young lady who would have contributed to the development of this country one year from now, but she has been kept at the same point for three years now.
She says, alongside her firstborn brother Dismas, they have, for the past three years, exhausted all means and resources moving up and down offices, only to be given false hopes. This is the most frustrating experience to go through and the question would be why do people work in government? Families to be tortured like this? This is embarrassing to the government as a whole as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Thandi must be joined in her solo protest against human rights abuse because I would call this serious abuse of human rights. The right to education has been denied and delayed as well. There’s psychological torture of the family as they go through these hard times without any income to support themselves in basic needs. Their lives are equally in danger and the government is responsible for this human rights abuse.
Sadly, the latest developing story on Thandi is that as several stakeholders are engaging on the possibility of holding peaceful demonstrations at Capital Hill to force Government pay all outstanding gratuity, it has emerged that a courageous Thandi, who has ignited the sleeping anger following her decision to hold a vigil at Accountant General’s office has been whisked away by unknown people.
Hon Navicha who went to Capital Hill to join Thandi in a night vigil was shocked when she was told by Security Personnel at Capital Hill that some unknown people came and drove Thandi away.
Malawi has gone back to the old dark days of intimidation, kidnapping and killing innocent people for expressing themselves in what is not right. That’s why even if this is not a political issue it is political in the sense that politicians who are in power have a hand in all this dirty work. That is why Malawians must be reminded to take this government to task.
