“It is a known fact that the circumstances we are in at this moment, are neither the teachers’ fault, nor are they the employers’ fault. The government is only taking precautionary measures by protecting the citizenry, as stipulated in section 13 of the republican constitution.

“CDEDI is, therefore, kindly appealing to government through the ministry of finance to introduce a waiver so that the affected employees are able to access their pension funds as one way of mitigating the impact of loss of jobs due to the pandemic,” reads a statement signed for by Silvester Namiwa head of CDEDI.

The organization has, however, welcomed government’s decision to introduce mandatory measures on usage of face masks when accessing services in all public institutions in a bid to contain further spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Namiwa says his organization has also noted that commercial banks and some shop owners have adopted the same mandatory measures on usage of face masks. He, therefore, appealed to government to make masks available to all citizens for free as the majority of Malawians now are in economic hardships to afford masks.

“It should be observed that the introduction of the preventive measures meant an outright job and business cut to many people, so it will be more or less like an insult to ask the very same financially strangled people to buy a mask in order to access public services which in most cases are essential,” says Namiwa.

CDEDI is therefore appealing to all public and private institutions, including commercial banks to make available face masks right at their doorstep to all.

“We are also appealing to the government to consider using some of the funds that have been set aside for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to buy the face masks to be distributed in all the public institutions,” he said.