The Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has appointed Gift Trapence as its new Chairperson after the resignation of Timothy Mtambo last week.
Speaking at the press briefing today, HRDC National Coordinator Luke Tembo disclosed that the Board of HRDC has decided to appoint Gift Trapence as the Chairperson of the Coalition.
“The HRDC Board agreed that Gift Trapence should lead the Coalition following the resignation of Timothy Mtambo who has now formed his own movement and right now there is no vice chairperson but I want to assure Malawians that the vice chairperson will be known soon and we will inform Malawians like what we have done today”,said Tembo.
Speaking after the pressor,the new leader,Trapence said it was important for HRDC to communicate to Malawians that the coalition has new leadership.
“I am the new HRDC chairperson after comrade Mtambo left. As HRDC we want to assure Malawians that HRDC is there and it will continue to represent Malawians. HRDC will continue to fight the ills that Malawians are facing,”
“They should know that there is nothing that can stop us from doing what we have been doing. We will continue doing the good work for Malawians. There will be seeing more work that HRDC is prepared to serve Malawians and we have to assure Malawians that during my leadership, they will see the same HRDC even more than what they have seen before”, said Trapence.
Commenting on Covid-19 pandemic, Trapence has asked the government of Malawi to put strong measures that will prevent the disease from spreading to the citizens and that they should put politics aside.
“It’s true that we are communicating to the government that Covid-19 should not be politicised we want a national response because what we have seen is that government is trying to politicise the whole response of Covid-19 and we would like to have a national response vwhere everyone is involved,”
“We can only defeat Covid-19 if we can only have a good approach and we would want the government to be transparent enough in terms of response we want to know where they are getting the resources, how much has been raised and where are we spending the resources. We know that politicians sometime are greedy and they can abuse the resources and that is why we are saying we want to know everything that is being done by th government to fight this pandemic”,said Trapence.
HRDC former leader Timothy Mtambo resigned last week and he has since formed his own movement called Citizens for Transformation Movement (CTF).
Meanwhile HRDC has promised to remain a political and continue to save the best interests for Malawians.
