Business came to a stand still for close to three hours in the commercial capital Blantyre on Monday following the closure of the Victoria Avenue – Sunnyside/CI road by Blantyre City Council (BCC).

This was due to the launch of Blantyre City Health Week launch which took place at Town Hall and the event was attended by Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Kondwani Nankhumwa and Mayor Wild Ndipo.

The closure of the said roads affected motorists, cyclists and even pedestrians as they were forced to use alternative routes thereby causing traffic-jam.

As this was not enough, some workers reported late for duties because they were stranded on the roads due to long queues.

“Blantyre City Authorities can do better especially on the issue of closing busy roads for some functions during business hours in the city, i.e today’s chaos on Victoria Avenue – Sunnyside/CI road was avoidable I suppose.

“I can’t imagine how many productive hours have been lost due to long queues and diversions. Seriously, look into such issues. I think we need to have some public way of computing losses due to such….anthu aziziwa,” wrote one of the affected motorists.

Coming to the event itself, Master of Ceremony who is also BCC Public Relations Officer Anthony Kasunda told the gathering that Nankhumwa will lead residents in cleaning old Blantyre bus depot but this did not happen.

Blantyre Health Week is being observed under the theme ‘Keep Blantyre City Clean’.

After the week, Blantyre City Council will run a ‘Clean Premises Competition’ where the council will be awarding the most clean business and residential premises.