Malawi Government remains coy on hunger reports

The Malawi government through Ministry of Information, Tourism and Civic Education has downplayed media reports that a man died of hunger in Mzimba district, at a time when verified reports indicate that hunger is already killing people in the country.

Earlier this week, Malawi24 reported that a man had been found dead in Mzimba and a postmortem indicated that the deceased died of hunger related causes.

But in a statement signed by Minister of Information, Tourism and Civic Education, Jappie Mhango says that no person in the country died of hunger.

According to Mhango, there was no post-mortem done in the bush where the dead body was found as no medical professional can conduct a post-mortem exam in the bush and establish the cause of death, especially if the finding is meant to be used in police investigations Mhango also says government believes that the deceased person is a non-Malawian because of the head features the police could recognize on the dead body and suspect that he is a refugee who fell sick and was abandoned by fellow refugees as they passed through bushes at night to avoid detection by Malawi authorities.

Surprisingly, Mhango also claimed that government had spoken to the medical person who visited the site and she told them that she found the body to be essentially bones.

The medic also told government that she could barely recognize some head features and had the impression that the person had been dead for a long time.

It seems the reports on the man’s death were a thorn in the flesh for a government that has continued to claim that no one will die of hunger in the country despite reports of shortage of maize in Admarc depots and of people staying days without food in rural areas

The hunger situation in the country has become worrisome as some citizens are now buying Madeya for their daily survival. In some ADMARC depots, there is inadequate maize making people to buy the commodity from vendors at a higher price.

A recent report by Malawi24 indicated that in Mzuzu City for instance, people have been scrambling for maize which in most cases was going at not less than MK300 per tin.

The hunger situation has not even spared prisons.