The Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS) has awarded five students with prize money, trophies and certificates for emerging winners of English essay writing competition called ARSO Essay Competition Award which attracted 56 entries from the country’s universities and colleges.
The participants, who were competing at national level, were Malawian students studying in National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) accredited universities and colleges and were below 35 years old and were required to write an essay of between 1,000 to 1,200 words.
MBS public relations officer, Monica Khombe, said the competition, which is an annual event, is organised with the aim of raising awareness on issues of standardization among the youth in Africa.
Khombe expressed concern with the low levels of participation among the students saying the total number of 56 entries that were registered is too low as compared to the number of all university students in the country which is over 20,000.
She further admitted that MBS did not do well on publicity, and this is one of the causes of low participation.
In his remarks, chairperson of a panel of four judges for the competition, Dr. Welman Kondowe, who is also a senior lecture at Mzuzu University, has described the process of the whole competition as transparent which gave room to the candidates to expose their potential in terms of writing abilities and their understanding of the roles of MBS in national development.
However, he singled out plagiarism by some candidates as a major challenge saying during the marking of the entries, they observed that some of the essays were copied from the internet and therefore he described the development as unfortunate.
University of Malawi (Unima) student, Julius Mwendewere Banda, who emerged the overall winner and received K250, 000 plus a trophy and certificate, said he was very excited, and he further encouraged his fellow students from all higher learning institutions to be taking part in such completions.
Tiyanjane Banda from Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) who scooped position two, has received K200, 000 plus a trophy and certificate.
Three students, Edward Mzumara from University of Livingstonia (Unilia), Kelvin Mmanga from UNIMA and Ian Daudi from Malawi University Business and Applied Science (Mubas) finished on third position, and they went away with K150, 000, a trophy and certificate each.
The international competition is organised annually by African Organization for Standardization (ARSO) and AMC Group Africa and locally is organised by MBS, and this was the 10th edition which attracted 20 female students and 36 males.
