We’ve just received reports that civil servants have gathered in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi to protest against the government’s decision to send them home early for the Christmas holidays without pay. According to reports, some civil servants have not been paid for two months (November let alone December). If this is widespread, the Christmas holidays may be a very hard time for some.

It seems the actions of donors to withhold budgetary aid are having a serious and far-reaching effects on the operations of the Malawi government, in that not only is the Malawi Kwacha continuing to slip against the dollar, but  while the president continues to travel around the globe, her government has now found itself in a difficult position where it cannot afford to pay its own employees??

This is interesting because, just a few days ago, someone in Malawi informed me that this was going to happen. Further, I was told that the 60% increase of civil servant salaries promised by the government here (see another report here), and for which Joyce Banda received a lot of acclaim, press attention and media coverage, has in fact not been effected??

Further, we are also hearing reports that the government has rescinded a promise to loan civil servants fertiliser, to a current position whereby a civil servant can only receive 2 bags on loan.

Again, we need to verify these reports carefully, but it seems there was an agreement / promise in place that stipulated that as long as a civil servant produced proof that they were into farming, evidence of land and how much they were investing, they were going to be loaned as many bags of fertiliser as they needed.