Parliament to summon environmental degraders

Malawi’s parliamentary committee on the environment is devising ways that will enable it to summon violators of environment preservation guidelines and policies to parliament for punitive measures, PANA reported on Monday. Chimunthu Banda, the committee chairman, said that the committee - formed early last year - was mandated to summon violators of the country’s environment policies to parliament for possible punishment as one way of enforcing environment policies. He said soon the committee would invite stakeholders to a roundtable discussion on how best the move can be put in action to solve some of Malawi’s serious environmental problems such as the illegal charcoal-making and selling business. Deforestation is the country’s most serious environmental problem and consumes at least 50,000 hectares of the country’s 750,000 hectares of indigenous forests every year, costing the country over US $1 million.