Maravi

Target your artillery at State House

Target your artillery at State House
By Editor
Thursday June 21, 2007 [04:00]

In trying to transform a poor Zambia into a prosperous country, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So we must be good at learning, education and training of our people.

Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt one’s thinking to the new conditions, one must have access to good education, one must study. Even those who are already educated, those who have attained high levels of education and are comparatively firm in their understanding of issues have to go on studying, have to absorb what is new and study new problems. We can learn what we don’t know.

Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. For this reason we have to continue spending more and more money on education. There should never be complacence in education because complacence is the enemy of study.

A society which values its future affords the highest priority to providing education for all its young people. And we must involve young people themselves in shaping education and training. There are many serious decisions that are being taken at the University of Zambia and other institutions of higher learning in our country without involving these young people.

The University of Zambian is seriously under-funded and highly in debt with many suppliers of goods and services. The University of Zambia owes over K200 billion to various suppliers of goods and services. And there is no way the University of Zambia, even under the most intelligent or the most industrious, creative management, will be able to repay this debt. Continued under-funding of the university will soon prove a serious fetter to the development of our country. The university gets an allocation of less than 40 per cent of its budget. How can anyone expect this university to function in an efficient, effective and orderly manner? It will be better to appoint finance minister Ng’andu Magande as vice chancellor of the University of Zambia and give him the money he has allocated to this university and see how far he will go in running it. We believe, as things stand today, it is impossible to run the University of Zambia in a stable and peaceful manner. Whoever we appoint as vice chancellor of this university will not achieve much if the level of funding does not improve.

The University of Zambia is not a business like Zambia National Commercial Bank or Zambia State Insurance Corporation which can run on its own after the initial investment has been put into it. Education is an investment that the state has to continually make. We shouldn’t be deceived by anyone that the University of Zambia can be commercialised or turned into a profit-making enterprise. Even in the United Kingdom and other European countries, education is still funded by the state, universities are still financed from the national treasury. Why is this so? It is as a result of the realisation that no country can develop and continue to do so without educated people. No matter how much natural resources a country is endowed with, it will not develop in a meaningful or beneficial way without an educated citizenry. For some time now, the quality of education in the country has been dropping from the high levels attained during the Kaunda days. The great majority of our well-educated people, those who were educated in the first and second Republics are now in their forties. There will be a serious gap when this group goes – and it is about to go. We shouldn’t be misled by the decades of stagnation under which the value of education seemed not to be such an important issue.

We shouldn’t be misled by the fact that today we have no jobs for most of our university and college graduates. A little growth in the economy will quickly alter this; it will highly increase the demand for educated labour. Again, we should never forget that there is no country in the world that has managed to develop without an educated population. Actually, it is possible to point at examples of countries that have developed without, or with very limited, natural resources but totally relying on a highly educated workforce. When people say that the most important resource of a country is its people, they don’t generally mean its ignorant people, they mean its educated people.

It doesn’t make sense for the government to ask the University of Zambia management to raise K6.5 billion for salary increments through cost cuttings. It’s immoral to ask an institution that is so under-funded to cut costs. It is clear that the University of Zambia management in its efforts to raise the K6.5 billion for salary increments to meet the demand of the striking lecturers is madness. In desperation, the University of Zambia management is cutting essential services like cleaning and refuse collection. Soon there will be an outbreak of cholera and other diseases associated with dirt. The University of Zambia will soon become a breeding place for rats, cockroaches, lice and other insects and little animals associated with dirt. Then probably more money will be released by the same government to fight cholera at the University of Zambia. This is not making sense.

There is no way the university will manage to function in a stable and peaceful way with 60 per cent cost-cutting measures. This would only be possible if the university was over-funded and there was wastage. In saying all this, we are not in any way encouraging wastefulness or misuse of resources. We will support all measures that are aimed at combating waste and that encourage diligence and frugality, that pay special attention to economy. Every kwacha that the university receives from the state should be used properly and adequately accounted for. But the University of Zambia management should not be expected to run that institution without money. There is no money for education but there is a lot of it for political activities. Well, this is a question of priorities. Let’s set our priorities right. Education is a right that must not be denied to our young people or else we throw away their lives.

We urge our young people to defend their right to good education with all they have. But at the same time, we advise them to do this with discipline and in a civilised and humane manner. They should not do anything that antagonises the public. Things like stoning innocent people and destroying or damaging private and public assets should not be condoned. We also urge them to be sympathetic, understanding and compassionate to the people running their university. The hands of the management of the University of Zambia are tied; there is very little they can do unless and until government pumps in more resources in the institution. So they should target their artillery to State House and ensure that their education receives the priority it deserves or should deserve in the allocation of public funds.

Labels: EDITORIAL, STATE HOUSE, UNZA

posted by MrK @ 3:53 AM