By Wanangwa Tembo

Kasungu, June 28, Mana: Kasungu Municipal Council on Friday elected Councillor Innocent Nkhoma of Chitete Ward as its mayor, replacing Heese Maclean Nyangu who has served for one term but decided not to contest.

Nkhoma floored his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) counterpart, Brighton Ngalande with seven votes against the latter’s two to grab the chain of command for the municipality.

In an interview Nkhoma said his priority is to make the municipality clean, improve the road network and help in resource mobilisation for improved service delivery.

 “I will ensure that our refuse vehicles are consistently on the road to ensure that our council is clean.

“We will try to mobilise resources from the donor community, loans from lending institutions as well as intensify local revenue collection,” he said.

Ken Kandodo who is the sole Member of Parliament (MP) within the municipality challenged the new town father to work with diligence and help to fix the many challenges the council is facing.

Said Kandodo: “We have elected a strong leader for this important position and we will give all our support to ensure that our municipality is developed.

“My appeal is that despite that we are getting into a busy season of elections which require that everyone gets to the ground campaigning, the mayoral responsibilities must not be forgotten.”

Kandodo said despite being small, Kasungu Municipality has many challenges that the new leadership must deal with together with everyone as a council.

In his remarks, Chief Executive Officer for the municipality, Isaac Mkandawire said the secretariat will offer all its support to ensure that the challenges such as street vending and a constrained resource envelop are dealt with.

“I’m excited that finally we have elected a new mayor through a process where there have been no issues.

“The expectation is that we will move forward together with all our support. We have very high expectations from him,” commented Mkandawire.

Equally, Braxton Banda who chairs Kasungu Civil Society Network expressed satisfaction in the manner the polls were conducted and challenged the new mayor to serve the interest of the public.

He said: “This is the process of governance that we expected and we hope the new mayor will commit to serve the people of Kasungu and Malawi as a country.

“We expect an improved road network and also enforcement of the laws governing the town so that business activities are properly regulated within the dictates of the laws.”

Kasungu Municipal Council has eight councillors and one MP – all belonging to MCP.