• The President of Malawi Red Cross Society, Levison Changole
• Red Cross Malawi Director of Programmes & Development, Hastings Kandaya
• A representative from Old Mutual
• Country Director for Huawei, Wan Wei
• Members of the Press
• Ladies & Gentlemen

Good Morning

The late Muhammad Ali said and I quote; “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” End of quote.

And if I am to add, nothing else brings so much joy than being in the service of others above self.

This morning, we pay tribute to our brothers and sisters whom we lost in the devastating floods and mudslides that occurred in the Northern region districts of Mzuzu and Karonga.

But it is also important to remember those that survived and who need a helping hand. This is why we are here this morning. We at TNM and our partners, Huawei and Old Mutual feel greatly relieved to be handing over a cheque of K24 million to the Malawi Red Cross to go towards relief to victims of floods in the Northern Region.

Following appeals by Government and relief agencies for help, we at TNM responded by creating a special SMS platform to generate money to go towards the disaster. Through a designated SMS code, Malawians of good will have been sending SMSes, through campaign dubbed Ndife Amodzi, from which part of the K24 million has been raised.

On its part TNM has contributed K15 million towards this noble cause. The balance of K7 million and K2 million, respectively, was matched by our technology partner Huawei and collaborating business partner on the Mpamba Fesa initiative, Old Mutual, to make the total K24 million. Let me therefore take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank both Huawei and Old Mutual for their generosity and coming to the rescue. This is the beauty of partnership.

TNM decided to channel the funds raised through the Red Cross as they are working closely with victims and support structures in the affected communities. Furthermore, the Red Cross is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations. They therefore have a lot of structures and experience needed to handle a disaster such as the one we have on the ground. We have full confidence in Red Cross’ ability to manage the financial and technical resources that have been made available to respond to the situation at hand.

You may wish to note that immediately after the disaster in Mzuzu and other parts of the Northern Region, on 12th April 2016, TNM extended a caring hand by giving out 282,000 minutes talk time to ease communication to all the people affected.  A further 5 Free minutes to 93,430 was also given to other affected flood victims to make calls to all networks on 19th April 2016.

We have recently launched a communication platform called “It’s Great.” to rally Malawians around the things they feel great about. Malawi is a great place to live and do business. Even though challenges such as floods and other disasters may come our way, Malawians should have a network to turn to and that is TNM. It is Great to share our network with millions of Malawians in both good and bad times. It is Great to share the money we generate on the network with people most in need. It is Great to invest and transfer money with TNM Mpamba. And it is Great to be a TNM customer in a Great country we call Malawi, the Warm Heart of Africa.

With those remarks, I thank you most sincerely for your ATTENTION.