An economic expert has bemoaned the growing tendency by some companies which are employing more foreigners to do jobs that can be handled by locals saying the development is hugely contributing to the country’s poor economic status. 

The Polytechnic economic lecture, Professor Betchani Tchereni, said this following recent revelation from the familiarization tours being conducted by the Minister of Information, that some companies have more foreigners as employees.

He said foreign employees have a greater opportunity of exporting the money earned from local companies and invest it abroad leaving the country without enough currency.

Professor Tchereni said: “Bringing in foreign companies is not a problem but the challenge comes when a large proportion of employees of those companies are foreigners because in most cases it leads the country into losing revenues as the foreigners choose to invest their earnings in their respective countries of origin.”

The expert further highlighted that the development is fueling unemployment levels, especially among the youth in the country, as the foreigners are robbing jobs from the locals.

“Malawi is saturated with many young people with a tremendous skill base but why giving the jobs to foreigners who have the same expertise as Malawians?” he wondered.

According to a recent data collected by the Christian Aid, from 2015 to 2017, Malawi’s annual loss on tax revenues is estimated at $189 million (K138, 920, 670, 000), a development which the expert also mentioned the employment of more foreigners as one of the contributing factor.

Recently the immigration department officials arrested a group of 67 illegal workers of Indian national for working in the country without permits.