Development not reaching people – Caritas Livingstone

Development not reaching people – Caritas Livingstone
By Sandra Lombe in Livingstone
Mon 26 July 2010, 14:00 CAT

LIVINGSTONE Diocese Caritas Justice and Peace co-coordinator John Mwewa has said people; especially in rural areas are bearing the brunt of poverty and struggling because development is not reaching them.

And Mwewa said civic education has to continue for people to analyze issues and make informed decisions. In an interview, Mwewa said despite reports of the economy doing well, the people at the grass roots were still not benefiting.

“The people are bearing the cross, they have the struggle that development is not reaching them, they can’t even understand that the economy is growing,” he said.

He said the rural people were not seeing the benefits of reduction in inflation and economic growth as it was not trickling down to them. Mwewa said the civic education should be continuous for people to make informed decisions at all levels.

“Civic education, if we are to succeed has to be continuous. The gap of inconsistence can be blamed on us,” he said.

“Poverty has a high adverse effect, even in capturing advocacy we have to align our economic system that it facilitates the development of a human being. Things are not as expected in the country.”

Mwewa bemoaned the continued rise in the prices of basic needs.

He said the May basic needs food basket was at about K2.1 million for a family of six.

“This has gone up and the figure excludes education, health and transport,” he said.

Mwewa said people at grassroots level need to understand government programmes.

“Most of the people don’t even know what the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) is and now we are talking of the Sixth plan,” he said.

He wondered how people, especially in rural areas could contribute to the SNDP when they did not understand it and had not seen the FNDP.

Mwewa said as a church they were trying their best to explain to the people.

“We still have an uphill battle to get the transformation of people,” he said.

“The levels of civic education are still posing a challenge. We need to inform, empower, and sensitize the public to get aligned to public issues, otherwise without these elements we have a long way to go.”

Meanwhile Mwewa said there was ineffectiveness in the publicity of the voter registration.

“It has been very ineffective, the fear is that many people won’t register, there is need to do more to catch the prospective voters,” he said.

“We just don’t know why it has never been a continuous process. Sensitization is key, issuance of the NRC and voters cards are cardinal pre-requisites if we to have good results.”