Barely hours after MV ILALA hit the waters of lake Malawi after over a 10-months absence, the vessel has once again broken down at Chipoka Harbour in Salima due to engine failure.
MV ILALA at the dock
The new manager of Malawi Shipping Company-MSC to which ILALA belongs-Motal Engil claims to have spent millions of Kwacha to provide full maintainance of the ship.
When MBC crew visited Chipoka in Salima on Sunday the very day it got stuck with passangers on board, the ship appeared to have been refurbished with new painting and furniture.
Asked as to why the ‘fully’ mantained ship experienced engine failure barely hours after setting off from Mangochi, an Engineer for marine vessels who also works for MSC Joshua Chitsonga said one of their newly fixed engine has a factory fault.
‘Its a problem beyond our control perhaps the engine is faulty right away from the supplier. But no need to panick we have engaged engineers from Baroworld equipments and have promised to fix the problem by next week,’ Chitsonga explained.
The marine vessel had about 50 people on board and those that were procceding from Chipoka to the northen part of Malawi have since been provided with transport refund to look for other means of transport.
Under Mota Engil currently apart from the passanger ship -ILALA, two other cargo vessels are also operational.