Will the real cause of Chaponda office fire be known?

Government may give hope on angry Malawians who have unanswered questions, perhaps thinking in a wrong way following the fierce fire that gutted the offices of the ministry of agriculture, irrigation and water development on Tuesday.

This is not the first time for a fire incident to crop up in a building that may have contained evidence for a controversial issue that needed investigation.

When reports of corruption at Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) involving politicians looting money meant for citizens surfaced years, an inferno burnt many documents at ESCOM House in Blantyre.

However, hope to know the truth of the matter was brought in when investigations were launched to establish the cause of fire, but the report by South African Incendium Fire Investigations firm stirred debate on whether the findings were correct.

Among such quarters that cast doubt on the findings included Consumers Association of Malawi (CAMA) who felt the report was ‘manipulated’.

CAMA executive director John Kapito faulted ESCOM for blocking the allegations of “foul play” as they were on record to have said that the matter was buried since the firm disclosed that there was insufficient interpretable fire patterns to allow for determination of an area of fire origin during interior inspection.

“We do not believe and trust such a report. Looking at the comments from ESCOM, they have rushed to conclude on the findings of the report where they have indicated that with this report everything surrounding the ESCOM fire is dead and buried.

“We strongly believe that the report is a manipulation by an insurance consultant who in our opinion did not understand the key issues that the people of Malawi believed to have been the cause of the fire,” Kapito said at the time.

This tells that many other Malawians who were not quoted on the press up to date do not really know the cause of fire that gutted ESCOM House.

Another mysterious fire accident that occurred in recent years is the inferno that gutted down the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) warehouse.

The incident happened while there was a court battle over parliamentary results in Lilongwe City South East Constituency between Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and MCP candidates.

Preliminary findings on investigation on the possible cause of the fire by Malawi police showed that it was ‘normal inferno’.

Malawi Inspector General Lexten Kachama disclosed that the fire was a mere accident, remarks that raised eyebrows of MCP members who described the sentiments as “unfortunate”.

MCP called for an independent investigation to carry on the probing of allegations of foul play, but as that was not done we can conclude that the party still believes the fire was politically motivated while others who chose to be fair hope that maybe in the future the cause of the will appear to face the light.

As the same fate of fire that has followed controversial issue of maize purchase in Zambia by Malawi has fallen on offices of ministry that has been cornered for corrupt dealings in the buying of staple grains, the public is yet to know the cause.

Police have embarked on investigation to know what caused the inferno at the offices of Chaponda and we are patience as we have been requested by minister of information Nicholas Dausi, waiting for the report by the Police on what caused the fire.

But following the investigations should we expect that the Police are to tell the real cause of the fire?