By Andrew Mkonda

Lilongwe, May 22, Mana: Member of Parliament (MP)for Lilongwe Msozi North, Sosten Gwengwe has condemned the tendency by some community members that encroach into public land such as schools and hospitals.

Gwengwe who is also Minister of Trade and Industry made the remarks Tuesday at Chadza Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in Lilongwe during the ground breaking ceremony of the construction of ICT lab at the school.

He said that, “As community members, we need to have proper development plans for any development project that government is implementing in our area.

“We need to have enough land for the expansion of projects such as schools or hospital. Any encroachment to government institutions across the country, should not be tolerated.”

Gwengwe thanked Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (MACRA) for the Connect a School (CAS) project saying it would assist in increasing access to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services among the students in rural communities.

“Malawi will never develop, up until we put much emphasis on human capital development. We need young people with various skills so that they are able to participate in the development of this nation and ICT skill is one of such important component,” he said.

Group Village-Head Chadza thanked government for the different development projects that are being implemented in their area.

He asked parents to continue teaching their children good morals, saying it was sad that students continue vandalizing government property in schools.

Head-boy for Chadza CDSS, Windrose Zuzera thanked government for the initiative saying it would give them huge opportunity to access information for their studies on internet.

“We have a huge problem of internet here. We do not have internet towers and whenever we want to be on internet, we go to nearby mountain where we access internet which is time consuming. But with the coming in of this ICT lab, it will minimize the challenges we have been facing,” he said.

MACRA will construct computer labs in 75 secondary schools of which 73 are CDSS, one national secondary school and one primary school with funding from MACRA's Universal Social Services Fund.