News stories by Charles Mpaka, page 2

Blantyre, Malawi, Jan 10 (IPS) - The toilets in the maternity wing of Namatapa Health Centre in the populous Bangwe Township in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city, fell into disrepair a few years ago. So, pregnant women who come to deliver their babies and their guardians use two pit latrines.

Lilongwe, Malawi, Dec 13 (IPS) - When a former deputy speaker of Parliament shot himself dead within the National Assembly buildings in Lilongwe in September 2021, it shook Malawi. It also turned attention to the mental health burden in the country.

BLANTYRE, Malawi, Nov 29 (IPS) - Ellena Joseph, a small-scale maise farmer in Chiradzulu District in Southern Malawi, finished preparing her field early in October.

Blantyre, Malawi, Oct 06 (IPS) - In August, police intercepted the trafficking of 31 people to Mozambique. The victims, all Malawians, included 17 children and 6 women. Their two traffickers, also Malawians, had coerced them from their rural village in Lilongwe district with a promise of jobs in estates in neighbouring Mozambique. But they were saved in large part thanks to their own community.

CHIRADZULU DISTRICT/BLANTYRE, Malawi, Aug 12 (IPS) - As households in Chiradzulu District in Southern Malawi start preparing their farms for the next maize growing season, Frederick Yohane, 24, is a busy young man.

In just a few weeks, seven villages that had expected to remain 'in the dark forever' will finally have electricity, courtesy of a small hydroelectric power plant on Lichenya River, one of the major rivers on the eastern slopes of Mulanje Mountain in southern Malawi.

Two battered plastic chairs bar entry to the toilets at the Bangwe Township Clinic in Blantyre. The toilets are not working because there is no running water — yet again. And if patients want to use the facilities they will have to run to the next- door primary school, which has pit latrines.

When the original owners of a 3.5 hectare piece of land put it up for sale because it was too waterlogged to farm on, Diana Sitima and her husband, Wilson, jumped to buy it.

In light of the recent spate of protests in Malawi, government should rethink its policy to devalue the local currency, economists say.

Ethel James cannot wait for the gravity-fed water scheme in her area to be fixed so that she and the other women in her village will no longer have to wake up before dawn everyday to queue for water.