Mary Kasambala broke down and amid sobs and tears cascading down her cheeks she narrated the ordeal of being a widow of a police officer.

“Please help me. Give us our money. We want to go back home,” lamented Kasambala in an interview on Thursday at her house in Mzuzu.

Kasambala (R) roasts maize for the family to eat

The 54-year-old mother of seven and her family are stuck in Police Lines in Mzuzu with precisely nothing of their own for survival. They entirely depend on neighbours and well-wishers.

According to Kasambala, two of her eldest sons dropped out of DMI-St John the Baptist University in Mangochi and Pentecostal Life University in Lilongwe, respectively, in 2020 due to lack of tuition fees and upkeep money.

One of the children is in secondary school while the rest are in primary school.

Kasambala explained that her hell-on-earth life started on October 26 2020 when her husband Henry, the family’s breadwinner died while still serving as a commissioned police officer stationed in Mzuzu. He died after serving for 20 years, and was due for retirement this year. He left behind his widow and seven school-going children. They are all now in dire need of support.

To date, almost two years after Henry’s death, the family, which is still staying in Police Lines in Area 4 in Mzuzu, keeps waiting for the breadwinner’s death gratuity.

In an interview on Thursday, Kasambala said their daily survival depends on good Samaritans.

The family draws water for domestic use from a nearby dam as it cannot raise cash to pay for water bills from the Northern Region Water Board.

She claimed that every time she follows up with police on her husband’s gratuity, she is told the money is not ready and they should keep waiting.

According to Kasambala, all she wants is for police management to give them, her husband’s money and repatriate the family to her village at Iyembe in Karonga.

Sometimes Kasambala and the children do some piece work (ganyu) to earn something for the family, though it is never enough.

Scores of police formations across the country have a ‘Kasambala family’—widows and orphans of deceased officers from the Malawi Police Service (MPS)—that are stuck in institutional houses, neglected and surviving at the mercy of their situations, according to other widows and police officers we talked to, but asked not to be identified.

Kasambala with some of her children

Weekend Nation could not independently verify the definite numbers of the affected widows and their children, but several police officers confirmed that almost all key police formations across the country have desperate households.

The families say they feel like outcasts, sometimes shunned by their neighbours, including close acquaintances who get agitated of being begged for financial or material support.

“They live through strenuous times. Some of these widows have been stuck in institutional houses for almost two years since their husbands’ death. They don’t even know when they will receive their benefits and be repatriated,” explained one senior police officer at Area 30, National Police Headquarters in Lilongwe.

She blamed the problem on bureaucracy that makes relevant offices take too long to process and disburse deceased financial benefits, a development that further plunges helpless families into destitution.

Another officer from Limbe Police Station, who has been in the service for over 25 years, explained previously that death gratuities took less than six months to be administered.

While wondering why they are being punished and subjected to “extremely distressing conditions”, some widows and children Weekend Nation randomly spoke to appealed to government to consider expediting payments of their benefits.

Some widows pleaded for confidentiality of their identities for fear of repercussions from police authorities even though they do not get any kind of assistance from police apart from staying in the institutional houses,

But Kasambala said she has had enough of ridicules and was exhausted of moving with a begging bowl all her life.

“Life has been unsympathetic… The burden of taking care of the children alone has plagued me. I just don’t want to see anyone suffering like my children and I have.

“This is persecution. There is no justice for the underprivileged. Why do authorities penalise the innocent and reward the wicked?”

While acknowledging the challenges facing widows and children of deceased police officers due to non-payment of death gratuity, National Police spokesperson James Kadadzera said there is nothing they can do to the families apart from processing the gratuity.

Regarding police houses occupied by the deceased families, Kadadzera said: “They have not received their benefits so we cannot ask them to surrender the houses.”

Former spokesperson for Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs Williams Banda said on Wednesday he also needed more time to engage relevant sections dealing with such matters.

However, Banda said: “They [beneficiaries of death gratuities at police] are normally put on a queue and, generally, for police, just as is the case with the MDF [Malawi Defence Force] are given funding from Treasury and they pay beneficiaries on their own… Their gratuity does not come directly from Treasury.”

On her part, Minister of Homeland Security Jean Sendeza said she was not aware about the widows’ situation but promised to follow up the matter with relevant authorities.

She said: “This is the first time I am hearing about those challenges but now that you have brought the issue to my attention, I will make a follow up and consult further so that I have tangible information.”

Renowned women’s rights activist Maggie Kathewera Banda said the situation was “really worrying and we expect the police and other relevant offices to expedite the process of paying their benefits”.

“It is unfortunate that they have had to live in such conditions. It is not supposed to be the case. If they were given the benefits, they would have been able to assist their families and move on. But the longer it takes, the more the situation worsens,” said Banda.

She urged government to put in place a proper system that would ensure the deceased families receive their benefits in the shortest period of time.

Social and economic justice activist Jolly Kenan also observed that the widows and children were going through “depressing moments with a huge burden over their heads”.

Kenan said it was high time the Ministry of Homeland Security resolved the bottlenecks in the payment of gratuities for the benefit of innocent women and children.

“This clearly demonstrates there is something wrong institutionally. Why should benefits take two years to process? By the time they get ready the value would have weakened,” he said.

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