Maravi

LETTERS - The National Budget

2008 budget
By Osman Mapiki
Saturday January 05, 2008 [03:00]

As people look forward to the 2008 budget, a quick reflection on 2007 budget and indeed all previous MMD government’s budgets shows that they are not workable. All they give us are the same platitudinous statements like; “We are going to reduce poverty.., we are going to improve health care..,” and so on . But have they improved anything really? The answer is NO.

What these budgets have achieved so far is to fatten the pockets and bellies of those individuals in the system, leaving the nation with the same perennial problems of poverty, sanitation, bad roads, fewer schools and many more.

This cyclical process of a ‘good’ budget every year but with no improvement reminds me of what a Caucasian German friend observed. He said Zambia and many African countries are in this state because its occupants are mad. My initial reaction then was anger and rage. But after a thorough review, I have identified two types of madness; Group madness and individual madness.

How else would you call a situation where the government spends hundreds of millions of wachas on a by-election in a constituency instead of solving serious water crises, impassable roads, sanitation and other problems people are facing?

That is group madness. Imagine how many boreholes could be sunk from that money. A by-election empowers only one ‘honorable’ person whose only job is to say, ‘yah, yah, yah’ to House motions. Boreholes would benefit over 30,000 constituency members, solve water shortages and improve sanitation.
(And that is just one of the many examples). Individual madness is the foundation of group madness although most of the times it is induced by group madness. Consider a person who hasn’t secured his future due to dropping out early from school. He or she starts producing children whom he or she can’t feed, educate or clothe, expecting other people to feed them for him.

Although his leaving school early could have been due to government’s failure (group madness) to build enough schools in his area, that is individual madness. The two forms of madness are reciprocal to each other and symbiotic too.

The indicated remedy to our economic problems is to treat the two vices. A budget can be written on the most expensive material and with the best financial phrases to smoothen its readability but it will remain a useless paper if its implementation is affected by group madness.

Labels: 2007 BUDGET, 2008 BUDGET

posted by MrK @ 7:24 AM