BY WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR
Traditional Authority (T/A) Machinjiri of Blantyre was on Thursday severely beaten up and undressed by his own people from Chiswe Village following disagreements over the ‘new’ procedure for distributing of subsidy coupons, The Sunday Times has learnt.
Southern Police publicist Dave Chingwalu said he is yet to receive the report, but District Commissioner (DC) Charles Makanga yesterday confirmed the incident happened.
Makanga explained that the villagers were protesting the ‘name verification exercise’ [of beneficiaries of subsidized farm inputs], which the DC had commissioned following complaints that some names were omitted from the list of genuine beneficiaries.
“My office received complaints that some deserving people were removed. In trying to address the problem, I instructed officials from my office and the chief to run a door-to-door verification process to confirm if the complaints were genuine,” Makanga said.
“But some villagers were against this arrangement. They blocked the team from doing the verification exercise and when the chief was trying to reason with them they surrounded him and started beating him up. Actually, they even stripped him naked. It’s a very unfortunate incident,” he added.
The chief was rushed to South Lunzu Health Centre where medical personnel treated him for broken tissues, the DC disclosed.
Since introduction, farm input subsidy programme has registered a litany of complaints and grievances from the supposed beneficiaries over registration process and distribution of coupons, among others. Chiefs are mostly blamed for their alleged favoritism when identifying beneficiaries of the programme, which aims at improving poor farmers’ food security.
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