Malawians Being Duped On Oil Exploration and Drilling Deals - Activist Mfiti

opinion

The government of Malawi lifted the oil ban on Lake Malawi in February, 2016. Ever since then the government of Malawi has not explained to the citizenry on why it decided to lift the suspensions. It is noted that the government of Malawi in November, 2014 put a ban on oil exploration in Malawi pending review of the oil licenses in view of that they were awarded dubiously. The lifting of the ban has been done almost a year later without proper explanation from the Ministry of Natural resources and mines on why they decided to lift the ban.

Currently the latest scooping study by the Malawi Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) report of February, 2016 reveals details of some payments that were made to Malawi government by oil companies but has not been accounted for by the government. The government of Malawi is not ready to make the production sharing agreements of the oil proceeds public. It is uncertain on how government of Malawi will protect Lake Malawi National Park which is a world heritage site and has been earmarked under block 4 of oil to be drilled in Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi is a unique lift valley formed lake with over a 1000 species of cichlids where 300 are unique to Malawi only. The fish species occur under rare evolutionary processes as such they are bound to be lost should the oil drilling process continue.

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