President Lazarus Chakwera says there are corrupt people who are deliberately frustrating the Affordable Inputs Program (AIP) and he has warned that his administration will not tolerate any malpractices.
Speaking during the weekly ‘Malawi Wa Tsopano’ radio broadcast, Chakwera said implementation of AIP has been affected by people who are overpricing, selling underweight quantities of the inputs and demanding kickbacks from farmers.
“There are some unpatriotic people who are trying so hard to frustrate the programme so they rip unsuspecting farmers. Others are also deliberately lying of network outages. I should assure you they will not achieve their ill motives,” said the Malawi leader.
Chakwera urged people to report such malpractices to relevant authorities so that those engaged in the acts should face the law.
The Malawi leader also noted that the AIP has been affected by network glitches and slow delivery of inputs to target areas.
He said network outages are making it extremely difficult to retrieve information of the beneficiaries but he assured Malawians that his government has engaged several stakeholders on the issue and the problems will be resolved soon.
On slow delivery of inputs, Chakwera said some suppliers haven’t fulfilled their contract obligations and he warned that contracts of such suppliers could be declared void.
The Malawi leader assured the nation that Government will do everything in its capacity to make AIP successful and ensure food security at household and national level.
Under the AIP, over 3 million smallholder farmers will buy 50kg bag of fertilizer at nearly K5,000
