Government says all plans are at advanced stage for rolling out of 9th phase of the Malawi Rural Electrification Programme (Marep).

Disclosing the development to Yoneco FM, Minister of Energy Newton Kambala said Marep 9 has already started with fresh surveys and procurement of materials for the programme.

“We are currently looking at Marep 9 after the Marep 8 was done, of course there some areas we got some areas where we need to finalize a few things Marep 8.

“Marep 9 has started by a new surveys that are happening now, and we also doing procurement of materials, we are currently under a process of procuring which is following an open tender and currently we are doing evaluation of bids that were submitted,” said Kambala.

According to Kambala, the project has been estimated at K20 billion and it will rolled out in most rural settings of the country where they are yet to be connected with electricity.

The Energy Minister has however relayed an apology to Malawians for the delayed progress of the project in the past two years.

“I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Malawians that for the past two years there hasn’t been enough progress on Marep projects.

“The reason is that we didn’t have enough materials and because of the political situations for the past two years a lot of projects derailed but currently government is doing everything possible to make sure that we are back on track,” said Kambala.