Malawi
Article Free PassLabour and taxation
More than four-fifths of labourers work in the agricultural sector. All Malawians except those employed in the army or police force are permitted to join unions. Trade unions and employer associations are connected with enterprises such as the tea, sugar, and tobacco plantations and the building and construction industry. Since the early 1990s, trade unions have increased in number, and their umbrella organization, the Malawi Congress of Trade Unions, has become an effective voice for workers in the country. The Ministry of Labour plays a significant role in maintaining good relations between employers and employees.
Tax revenue is derived from multiple sources: employees pay an income tax, local companies pay taxes at a fixed rate of chargeable income, and companies incorporated outside Malawi pay an additional tax. In the execution of monetary policy, the IMF and the World Bank have been working with the Malawi government to ensure fiscal discipline, including a more efficient way of collecting tax revenue; the Malawi Revenue Authority was established to oversee the latter.
Transportation and telecommunications
Malawi has road connections to Lusaka, Zamb., by way of Mchinji and Chipata, Zamb.; to Johannesburg, S.Af., by way of Mwanza and Tete, Mozam., and Harare, Zimb.; and to several points on the Mozambique border. The backbone of the road system is represented by a road running from Blantyre in the south to Lilongwe in the centre and through to Mzuzu in the north, where it joins a lakeshore road that ran roughly parallel to it until that point. From Mzuzu the road continues on to Karonga and crosses the Songwe River into Tanzania, where it connects with the highway to Dar es Salaam. During the Mozambican civil war, the Dar es Salaam–Karonga route was used to transport cargo, especially oil, which was transferred to lake barges at Chilumba and then shipped south to Chipoka and Monkey Bay. The feeder roads, most of which are in the rural areas, are not as developed as the main highways. Almost half of all roadways in the country are paved.
Of Malawi’s two railway links to the sea, the first stretches from Lilongwe eastward to Salima on the Lake Malawi shore and southward through Blantyre to the port of Beira on the Mozambique coast; an extension from Lilongwe to Mchinji, on the Zambia border, was completed in 1980. The second railroad joins the Salima-Blantyre line at Nkaya Junction to the south of Balaka and travels due east to link with the Mozambique Railways system at Cuamba, Mozam., whence it continues to the port of Nacala. Increased guerrilla activity in Mozambique after 1981, including attacks on these rail lines, forced Malawi to seek alternative, much longer routes to the sea, first through South Africa and then through Tanzania, adding substantially to its freight transport costs. With the end of the civil war in Mozambique in the early 1990s, traffic through that country slowly resumed as rehabilitation of the infrastructure was undertaken.
Of the rivers, only the Shire is partially navigable, all others being broken by rapids and cataracts. Lake Malawi has long been used as a means of inexpensive transportation. A passenger and cargo service that operates on the lake is linked to the Chipoka railway junction about 17 miles (27 km) south of Salima. The main ports on the lake include Monkey Bay, Nkhotakota, Nkhata Bay, Likoma Island, Chilumba, and Karonga.
Air Malawi, the national airline, provides foreign and domestic service. There are several airports in the country, including the primary international airport at Lilongwe and the Chileka airport, situated just north of Blantyre.
The domestic telephone system consists mostly of landlines and microwave radio links and radio communication stations. For international linkages, satellite earth stations are used. Within Malawi there is a serious shortage of landlines, and it is difficult to maintain the infrastructure; both issues are exacerbated by the theft of cables, and efforts to bring information technology to the more remote parts of the country have been hindered. Although mobile cellular telephone use is on the increase, service is generally limited to urban areas.
Government and society
Constitutional framework
Malawi is a multiparty republic. Malawi’s original constitution of 1966 was replaced with a provisional constitution in 1994, which was officially promulgated in 1995 and has since been amended. It provides for a president, who is limited to serving no more than two five-year terms, and up to two vice presidents, all of whom are elected by universal suffrage. The president serves as head of state and government. The cabinet is appointed by the president. The legislature, the National Assembly, is unicameral; its members also are elected by universal suffrage and serve five-year terms. The 1995 constitution also provided for the creation of an upper legislative chamber, but it was not established by the target completion date in 1999; a proposal to cancel plans for the creation of such a chamber was passed by the National Assembly in 2001.
Local government
The country is divided into a number of administrative subdivisions—district, city, municipality, and town—that are governed by assemblies. Each assembly has a political arm and a technical arm. Efforts have been undertaken to strengthen local governments by giving them more financial autonomy from the central government.
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