Chilima had traveled for the funeral of a former cabinet minister
Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has revealed there were no survivors when a plane carrying his deputy, Dr. Saulos Klaus Chilima and nine others crashed in a forest on Monday morning.
“The plane has been found and I am deeply saddened and sorry to inform you all, it has turned out to be a terrible tragedy,” said Chakwera in a televised address on Tuesday.
Government yesterday said the Malawi Defense Force Aircraft that left Lilongwe on Monday, 10th June 2024 at 09:17 Hours, carrying Dr. Saulos Chilima and nine others, “failed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu International Airport at 10:02.”
All efforts by aviation authorities to make contact with the Aircraft since it went off the radar on Monday had failed until Tuesday morning when the wreckage was found in Mzuzu, about 230 kms from Lilongwe.
Chilima had traveled for the funeral of a former cabinet minister.
Malawi Defense Force, General Valentino Phiri, was by last night leading rescue efforts.
The development comes at a time Africa is struggling to recover from the April 18 chopper crash in Kenya which killed the Defence chief, Gen Francis Ogolla.
The President yesterday canceled his scheduled departure for the Bahamas and ordered all regional and national agencies to conduct an immediate search and rescue operation to locate the whereabouts of the aircraft.
CTV News reported that traffic controllers told the plane not to attempt a landing at Mzuzu’s airport because of bad weather and poor visibility and asked it to turn back to Lilongwe, Chakwera said. Air traffic control then lost contact with the aircraft and it disappeared from radar, he said.
Seven passengers and three military crew members were on board.
The president described the aircraft as a small, propeller driven plane operated by the Malawian armed forces.
The tail number he provided shows it is a Dornier 228-type twin propeller plane that was delivered to the Malawian army in 1988, according to the ch-aviation website that tracks aircraft information.
Around 600 personnel were involved in the search in a vast forest plantation in the Viphya Mountains near Mzuzu, authorities said.
Profile
Vice President Dr. Chilima was born on 12th February 1973.
Dr. Chilima is a Ngoni from Ntcheu
District in Central Malawi.
He is married to Mary and together they have two children.
Dr. Chilima is a Roman Catholic with leadership positions within the church.
Chilima was first sworn in as Vice President of the Republic of Malawi On 30th May 2014.
On 28th June 2020 Dr Chilima was sworn in for his second term as Vice President of the republic of Malawi.
He holds a PhD in Knowledge Management from the University of Bolton, a Master’s degree in Economics as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences, Computer Science and Economics from the University of Malawi.
Dr. Chilima is the first Malawian to head Airtel Malawi, the leading mobile telecommunications company in the southern African country.
Before venturing in telecommunications, he held Senior Sales Marketing positions in the banking sector and the fast moving consumer goods sector namely the Leasing and Finance Company, Unilever Malawi, Coca cola and Carlsberg.
Source: Chimpreports.com