To whoever can act right now, this Sunday afternoon, as lives hang in the balance,
This is an SOS.
I am at Bwaila Hospital in Lilongwe with a woman in labour. She is waiting for an operation. Another woman is already on the operating table. Doctors are ready.
But there is no electricity.
No power in a hospital. In a maternity theatre. In a life-and-death situation.
This is not new. We are told power faults at Bwaila are routine. The ESCOM line is unreliable. Always failing. This has become “normal”.
Yet homes and shops in town have electricity right now—Area 23, Area 25, Area 36, Area 12.
So why is a hospital in darkness?
Some places must never lose power—especially hospitals. Human life is at stake. There are no excuses.
ESCOM, do your job. Fix the line supplying Bwaila Hospital once and for all. Repeated faults here are not technical problems. They are negligence. They are incompetence. May be they want the hospital to bribe them so they can fix the recurrent problems once and for all. ESCOM’s blindness to this problem ignores a simple truth: those who climb poles can fall, and when they do, they will need the same hospital and power they are withholding.
Do not blame the hospital. The administrators have done their part. They ran diesel generators for hours. Fuel is now finished. You cannot run a major hospital on diesel every day.
There is no national power crisis in Malawi today. This failure is about ESCOM. Full stop. If anything tragic happens because of this blackout, responsibility lies with ESCOM leadership.
This is shameful. This country deserves better.
Highly Concerned Husband
Bwaila, Lilongwe.
