Maravi

(STICKY) MMD’s ‘development’

MMD’s ‘development’
By Patrick Mulenga, UK
Sun 24 July 2011, 14:00 CAT

Editor,

The MMD and sundry chiefs and church leaders praising the ‘unprecedented development’ under the Rupiah Banda administration are either being insincere or they do not know the meaning of ‘unprecedented’ and ‘development’. Perhaps they mean to say that some individuals have experienced unprecedented personal development in the past three years.

For their information, the last truly unprecedented development that Zambia experienced was during the Kaunda era when most of the physical infrastructure in the country was constructed. Even the institutional houses that have been sold for political expediency by presidents Chiluba and Banda were built during Dr Kaunda’s time. It is also worth noting that Kaunda’s government instituted a comprehensive manpower development programme that included free education up to university level and vocational training in skills that were previously the preserve of foreigners. Dr Kaunda can justifiably boast that he’s “been there and done that”.

In contrast to this, 20 years of unbroken rule by the MMD has been characterised by neglect or deliberate destruction of the physical infrastructure and socio-economic systems established by UNIP. Successive MMD administrations have subjected the hapless Zambian people to disastrous pseudo-liberal economic adventures, which they justify with theoretical growth statistics that have zero impact on the ordinary Zambians. It is not ‘unprecedented development’ to hastily patch up roads that have been neglected since they were constructed 40 years ago or to build schools and hospitals without trained personnel. Equally, it is not development to throw more than 80,000 indigenous managers and skilled workers on to the streets, just to replace them with a few hundred unskilled casual workers.

MMD can only boast of unprecedented development when they construct completely new roads and railways to open up new areas of economic activity outside the mining areas, establish new value-adding manufacturing industries, create quality employment for the multitudes of unemployed Zambian youth and set up an education system that equips school leavers with useful practical skills instead of unusable academic qualifications. They can talk of development when there is reduced poverty in the whole country, not just among the political elite and their families.

MMD should not talk of development when they have literally mortgaged the country to foreign interests in the name of ‘foreign direct investment’ and are denying citizens an equitable share in the proceeds from the country’s natural resources, including land.

Incidentally, the MMD laughed at Sata and the PF when they said that they could achieve tangible development in 90 days, but isn’t that what the MMD is trying to do now?

Labels: DEVELOPMENT, FDI, MMD, NEOLIBERALISM

posted by MrK @ 1:59 AM