Mourners on Thursday took the body of their relative to Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) offices in Mzuzu after the man died due to hypertension following misunderstandings with officials at the tax body.
The man identified Denis Kasache died on Thursday morning at Mzuzu Central Hospital after suffering high blood pressure during an argument on the consignment of goods he was clearing at Songwe Border in Karonga District.
According to Kasache’s close friend, an MRA official whose name has been withheld at the moment collected K3 million from the late Kasache but the truck carrying goods was not released.
Following the man’s death, family members of the man sought an intervention of one of the cabinet ministers who advised them to collect their money back since MRA had not yet issued any receipts on the goods to be cleared at the border.
Smelling a rotten rat on the issue, the MRA official bolted and switched off his phone, a development which angered family members of the late Kasache who said they wanted to use the money for the burial activities of their relative.
Having received no convincing response to their plea, the family members resorted to taking the dead body at the Mzuzu MRA office.
They later agreed to take the corpse to the house of the MRA official who switched off his mobile phone.
Additional Police Mobile Services officers from the Delta Division of the Malawi Police Service (PMS) were deployed to guard the revenue collection offices.
In October, last year business operators in the northern region also blocked operations at MRA offices in Mzuzu for various reasons ranging from poor road network in the region to sexual harassments against female business operators by some MRA officials.
