Implementing programmes that will not solve problems they purport to solve is misplaced effort and an inexcusable exercise in futility. What problems would political hand-outs and freebies—which is what President APM’s programmes are—solve, save exacerbating the problems? I do not know of a country in the recorded history that developed itself or its economy and tangibly improved the living standards of its people out of giving out unproductive freebies much less solve the problem for which the freebies are given out. Why? They breed debilitating dependency and work against the biblical ethos of self-reliance, hard-work and an honest ‘pay’ key to any personal upliftment and ultimately the upliftment of the entire nation (we have poured close to a trillion Malawi Kwacha in ‘free’ farm inputs but remain food insecure, dispensed even more trillions in various social cash transfer programmes to no avail as recipients remain impoverished as ever).
President APM with a far superior academic pedigree (wotulukira pakhomo) prescribes the same empty, ineffectual and unproductive political programmes as his predecessors Joyce Banda or Bakili Muluzi who have far inferior academic pedigrees (wothawira pawindo) implying a negative value addition from increased classroom years? I expected ‘smart’ freebies programmes (if he must have them) from someone who insists on wearing, inappropriately, a professorial title on his forehead: political freebies offering real value for each tax dollar spent on such programmes. How about ‘smart’ programmes for the truly needy which reduce the import bill, reduce environmental degradation where roofing materials are local non-metallic materials but with superior attributes, walls are non-burnt bricks or some cement less blocks or other non-traditional (re-defined) walls but, again, with superior attributes and floor systems comprising of some low-cement dependent building components. High visibility, limited, low-budget, smart and innovative programmes whose innovative concepts can gain currency among the larger tax-paying public who bear the brunt of the tax-burden for these freebies but have no houses of their own. But what do we get?—a replica of the ineffectual, degrading and dehumanizing programmes of gone-by eras.
President APM’s efforts at improving the skills base and level of the country’s youths and expanding tertiary education are as laudable as they are laughable. The country’s industry’s unequivocal assessment of the country’s tertiary and secondary educational products as not meeting the industry’s requirements and needing costly retraining to get them to industry ‘consumption’ grade, with most of them outright ‘unemployable’, is a very damning indictment of the country’s educational system. President APM’s response is more of the same: build more single discipline (laughable) universities and country-wide community colleges so they can churn out more of the industry ‘unemployables’.
President APM’s Unima CEO is actually on record that ‘his vision is to treble student population by 2017’! TEVETA can be forgiven for believing that simply building more technical colleges across the length and breadth of the country will improve the quality of the skills imparted to the students.
I truly do not see how these efforts answer industry’s lament. Funding to existing public universities has been cut to the bone such that even ‘industry-based’ final-year-student projects and attachment programmes recommended by industry to begin addressing the current lack of skills by our educational products have been mercilessly slashed or altogether discontinued (if colleges took seriously their work they would have refused to operate with such ‘skeleton’ funding adversely affecting critical programme activities but we know they do not). The four technical colleges have no funding for practical training requirements.
What is the logic in expanding entities that are churning out ‘unacceptable’ without first stopping the churning out of ‘unacceptable’ in the existing entities? Grants to primary schools have altogether been discontinued and funding for primary school teaching and learning materials have been cut to the bone; ill-trained, demotivated and rarely-paid-on-time teachers continue to infest our primary schools so just where do we begin to deal with the issue of improving our educational products if we cannot prioritise their requirements?
President APM’s civil service reform programme lacks the seriousness and no-business-as–usual flavour presumed to characterise it and is likely to do more harm than good. In giving this extremely critical task (of turning around a dysfunctional civil service thriving on thieving, pilfering, incompetence and such warped values as rendering them incapable of recognizing their central role in the development agenda of the nation) to a taskforce comprising of nondescripts who (I swear) have no profound understanding of the pre-1993 DHRMD (the central government agency responsible for the overall policy in the management of human resources in the public service), the pre-1993 MPSR (the ‘bible’ of public administration and civil service regulations), much less the ‘feel’ for the ‘reforms’ and ‘restructuring’ that transpired, for good or worse, in the tumultuous 1994 President APM has made it clear it is not ‘positive’ civil service reform (an effective, efficient, highly competent, hardworking, honest and disciplined civil service) he is interested in but a civil service based on blood, tribe, ethnicity and warped political affiliation that will easily compromise its independent functions, powers and duties as impartial civil servants of the general public in favour of President APM, his political party and tribal grouping.
President APM pre-empted the whole programme by basing his major appointments of his 8-months stint in office largely on blood, tribe, ethnicity and political affiliation (in some cases he was willing to flout the laid down administrative procedures and the governing law to achieve this—this from someone ‘committed to reforming’ a dysfunctional civil service sounds incongruous).
I do not see anything in President APM’s programmes that can catalyse and re-awaken the Malawian ethos of hard-work and honest ‘pay’ that transformed a pre-independence primitive economy into a post independence ‘mini-tiger’ economy nor do I see the ‘dreaming-in-color’ confidence of his late brother save the malaise, mediocre, doom and gloom of gone-by eras.
Contribution by: Chisala, Maxwell L.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Maravi Post’s editorial policy.
