Ministry eyes smart, sustainable cities

MALAWI: Minister of Local Government, Professor Blessings Chinsinga, has stated that his ministry is committed to creating smart and sustainable cities that will aid in the advancement of the country's social-economic growth.

The minister made the remarks while touring some of the developments, including road construction projects, being carried out by the Lilongwe City Council (LCC) in the city of Lilongwe on Wednesday.

According to Chinsinga, smart and sustainable cities have the potential to contribute more to the country's social and economic growth.

“As part of our transforming agenda, we want cities that are smart and sustainable; we mean the cities that can withstand the effects of climate change such as floods. Looking at the existing statistics, cities in the country contribute about 33 percent to the social-economic growth of the country, for this reason, we want to improve our cities in order to assist more in social-economic transformation and prosperity of the country,” Chinsinga said.

As a result, he praised LCC for its projects in Lilongwe, stating that they are in line with the plans of the Ministry.

“Looking at the projects which the Lilongwe City Council is currently undertaking in Lilongwe city, it shows that the council has meaningful transformation agenda and this is fully in line with our plans as the ministry,” he said.

In his remarks, Lilongwe City Mayor Richard Banda stated that the city faces an infrastructure challenge and that the council is working tirelessly to address the issue.

“The city council has a lot of challenges about infrastructure within its locality, therefore as the council, we are working on the ground to address the challenge by improving the infrastructure such as roads and currently we have already completed constructing some roads within the city.

“We have the vision that at the end of our projects we will have better infrastructure in our city,” Banda explained.

According to the Mayor, LCC is currently working on 26 projects in Lilongwe with a total budget of K12.9 billion.