Partners in the Malawi Shipping Company, Mota Engil, have disclosed that MV Chilembwe has been completed and is now on the waters of Lake Malawi.

The company has since last year been reassembling a water vessel at Monkey bay in Mangochi to help relief the old MV Illala, which is the main water transport facility currently available.
The 120 seater passenger vessel has a capacity of carrying cargo over 30 tones and can reach the speed of 23 nots, making a much faster vessel than Illala which is limited to 8 nots.

The Illala which is said to have outlived its life span has been affecting movement of people on the islands on the lake to the main land due to its frequent breakdowns.

However FaceofMalawi speaking to managing director of Mota Engil, Jose Denis Da Silva disclosed that the new vessel is ready to set sail.

Da Silva further added that currently they are training operations crew for the Chilembwe before its open to passengers.

“The ship is ready, we started training the crew operating the vessel at the beginning of the month and the training is going to take us one month to complete, there i assume that we will be ready to start sailing by November or December.

He added that the company is looking forward to working with Malawi in several sectors for infrastructure development.

”We have many plans in as far as business for Malawi is concerned we are focusing on various areas including water transport, Tourism, Agriculture, Energy and Mining just to mention a few and all of these are labour intensive and have direct benefits for the locals” Said Da Silva.