At least 25 police officers from Malawi Police Service (MPS) have been deployed to Lilongwe City Council (LCC) on secondment to support the city council in the enforcement of laws within its area of jurisdiction.
Speaking on Tuesday during orientation of the newly deployed police officers in Lilongwe, Mayor for Lilongwe City, Councillor Richard Banda hailed the deployment of police officers to LCC.
“As Lilongwe City Council we had a big challenge in terms of enforcement, for example during the exercise of removing the vendors, the vendors were failing to comply and we were supposed to hire the police officers to help us which was expensive.
“Now that we have our own police officers, sanity will be back to normal in the city because whatever exercise we will need to do in the city it will be easy for us,” Banda said.
He added that the police officers will also help to boost revenue collection for the city council saying that previously the city council has been failing to collect enough revenue from Lilongwe city residents due to lack of strong enforcement team.
“We have been lacking strong support in terms of enforcement, our revenue collectors are harassed when they go out there to collect market fees, but with the police officers I know everybody will be able to pay city rates in a proper way and this will boost revenue for the council,” he said.
In his remarks, Assistant Commissioner of Police who is also Director of Community Policing and Police Units, Alex Simenti commended the deployment of police officers to LCC.
“We are very grateful to the initiative made by the Lilongwe City Council that they have engaged the police officers to be working in Lilongwe city, this will bring change in terms of sanity in the city,” Simenti explained.
Reported by Moses Nyirenda
