Agricultural produce suppliers to refugee container owners demands their money
By Vincent Gunde….
Agricultural produce suppliers who have been supplying soya beans and groundnuts to refugees and asylum seekers the owners of the 125 containers confiscated by police in May, 2023 are demanding their money back claiming that them too, are suffering.
The suppliers said they are only hearing of force-opening and searching of containers exercise but nothing is being said to them meaning that the refugees were buying agricultural produces by themselves without the suppliers who are Malawians.
They say they are linking up with the refugees and asylum seekers at Dzaleka Camp but the situation they are in, they cannot pay back what they owe them as they are all waiting for the outcome of the opening and searching of their containers.
One of the suppliers, Mr. Kumbilani Chizule of Chinsapo 2 in Lilongwe has complained bitterly that on the 16th May, 2023 he supplied 40 bags of shelled groundnuts in a-hired two tonner vehicle worth K1,912,350.00.
He said on 17th May, 2023 he received a phone call informing him that his boss was arrested by police and was heaped at Maula Prison in Lilongwe, he followed it up to Maula to cheer him and agreed that everything would be sorted out after his release from Prison.
The supplier said it is sad the confiscated containers opened and searched by police with their police dog are being taken taken to the police Headquarters speaking to itself that the containers are still in the hands of government which is contrary to their thinking.
He said he would have been happy if the suppliers have been given back what they supplied and to him soya beans because all the groundnuts which are in the containers have gone bad and if offered for sale, he cannot realize his lost money.
”I am bankrupt, I have no money to pay back to the owner of a-two tonner vehicle I hired for the groundnuts to reach Mgona market and I am living a troubled life,’’lamented Chizule.
He has since pleaded with President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera to intervene in the situation the suppliers are sailing through and to make sure that the suppliers should not be treated as refugees and asylum seekers who were operating their business at Mgona market without valid papers.
