President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera has revealed that hackers of the system at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services are demanding a huge sum of money to unfreeze it.

Chakwera made the revelation on Wednesday when took questions from members of Parliament (MPs) in the National Assembly.

For the past few weeks, the department has been facing challenges to process travel documents due to the system failure.

This has left both Malawians and non-Malawians stranded as they cannot access their travel documents.

But speaking in parliament, President Chakwera vowed that his government will not release any money to hackers, stressing that the government will, instead, find other means of resolving the glitches.

“For as long as I am President of this country, I will not allow the government to pay such an amount,” he said.

He added that the department has taken a decisive step to regain control of the system.