BEIJING-(MaraviPost)-Malawian students stranded in China due to effects of the Covid 19 lock-down have cried foul after the Malawian Embassy couldn’t clarify how they are disbursing the relief funds to the concerned students.
It has been a month now since since Capital Hill released money to bail out the stranded students from the doldrums of acute financial need due to skyrocketing costs of living due to the pandemic in China.
After Capital Hill transferred the funds to Beijing for the Embassy to distribute to the students, the Embassy has taken a whooping three weeks just to serve less than 30 students only, leaving out more than 150 others without the help.
Mac Matsiriza, a Malawian officer in charge of this process in Beijing informed the students through their leadership that out of the 209, he was also going to exclude everyone from Wuhan, dropping the figure further from the number Government is known to have approved.
The students are asking as to where will the money for those from Wuhan go, yet other students are also left out.
One affected student lamented: “We are in a situation very difficult to explain. The Embassy seems to be playing a dirty game on us. Government said they sent money for 292 students, but the Embassy here says they got the money for only 209 students.
Among the purported 209, only 27 students have received the money. When we ask the Embassy why the delay to give the rest of the students, the Ambassador said ‘ana inu ndinu ovuta kwambiri’ and he only laughed, a clear and unfortunate message that he doesn’t feel nor appreciate what we are passing through”.
Another second year Masters student sounded sobbing: “There is a lot of lack of transparency and accountability as far as this money is concerned. The Government touted to have helped 292 students while the Embassy claims that the government sent funds only for 209 students. It is hard to know who is lying. But the Government is aware of all these contradictory messages and doesn’t want to clarify anything.
“We are tempted to think this is another syndicate. Our names are being removed from the list of beneficiaries without telling us clearly what criteria they are using to identify who should benefit and who should not”.
He wondered, “Why should the whole Government entertain such a shame? The nation is watching and all the students are alert. Tomorrow will be our payback time.”
Meanwhile, the students have been pressurizing their Association leadership to access the entire list of the names which the Embassy claims to have sent to the banks.
“We strongly believe that the Ambassador is hiding the list of names because they know that this list may not reflect as many students as the 209. We are afraid they want to use our names to abuse the money. This is public money for Malawians. We are the Malawians and we want to know who has benefited from the public funds.
‘We’re agents of transparency and accountability. We hope the Minister of Foreign affairs will instruct the Embassy to release the list to us or to the general public. This is public information demanded after the Information Bill is in effect. The Government must walk their talk.”
Currently, all students under scholarship have not yet received any stipend due to some logistics with their respective granters. What is more worrisome to the students is that all banks will not be working will be next week in China as the whole country will be on a recess for their national public holiday.
Efforts to talk to the Malawian Ambassador in Beijing, Namondwe proved futile as his mobile phone went unanswered.
When our reporter contacted the Secretary General for the Association of Malawians in China, Livingstone Lazarus Banda referred the matter to the Embassy as he was busy attending a class.
Malawi Government, through the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Honorable Mkaka informed the nation that they had helped 292 students in China after CDEDI had penned Government to move in to assist the students promptly.