Malawi needs to utilise geological data

It is sad that Southern Malawi has been devastated by Tropical Cyclone Freddy with geological experts saying that areas that are already marked as disaster prone areas in geo-hazard maps produced by the Geological Survey Department (GSD) and other geological reports are those heavily affected.

We agree with geologist Ignatius Kamwanje that this smacks of lack of seriousness by responsible government officials in their appreciation of geological information or in engaging technical experts to create awareness and sensitize the population living in disaster-prone areas.

It also manifests lack of coordination between government departments and agencies. It seems GSD just produces this geological information but there are no arrangements that are put in place for the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) to utilise this data to cushion the population from the impact of such disasters.

As Kamwanje says Government through the City, District and Town Councils also lacks seriousness in enforcement of land laws and regulations and this lack of seriousness has resulted in people building houses in areas not designed for human settlement.

In the wake of this disaster, we, therefore, call upon the government to start utilising geohazard data to seriously plan on how to cushion the population from the devastating impact of future disasters.

It is absurd for Malawi to fail to save lives and property that would have been spared if government had been serious enough to utilise this important data.

Government spends a lot of money to produce this data and it serves no purpose when as a country we fail to utilise it because of laxity.

It is due to the same laxity that Malawi has also failed to utilise geological data to follow up gold prospects in the country to market to investors and secure them from illegal miners and smugglers.

Now we are talking of the country losing millions of dollars due to smuggling of gold and other precious stones.

As we pursue the Malawi 2023 vision, it is important to bear in mind that no country can develop without utilising its human resource such as the geologists that produce this data for the benefit of the nation.

Likewise no country can develop without safeguarding its natural resources, such as the gold being smuggled, and the best way to do it is to utilise data on mineral occurrence which government has produced through projects such as the Geological Mapping and Mineral Resource Assessment Project (GEMMAP).

One thought on “Malawi needs to utilise geological data

Leave a Reply