Maravi

We can't behave like we live in a rich country

COMMENT - I agree with the sentiment, however the biggest waste of all are the billions of dollars taken out of the country by 'foreign investors' in the mining sector. If Zambia is so poor, if mines are a 'wasting asset', then we cannot afford to get every cent from our collectively owned natural resources. Or tax windfalls when prices are high. We can't afford to be penny wise and pound foolish. No matter how nice a car a public officer drives, it is just a car. It is not billions of dollars lost to the economy as we see in the mining sector.

We can't behave like we live in a rich country
By The Post
Sun 25 Dec. 2011, 14:00 CAT

IT will take us a very long time to move the great majority of our people out of poverty if we do not drastically improve the way we manage our country's limited resources.

As Tony Cotter, the Irish Ambassador to Zambia, has advised, we need to improve and strengthen our public financial and management procurement systems to ensure accountability, efficiency, effectiveness and orderliness.

We need to make the best use of whatever financial resources we are generating locally and whatever we are given by others through grants or loans. We have the potential to develop. But potential has to be efficiently and effectively exploited to be of value. Having the potential is one thing and being able to develop out of that potential is another.

Potential is not development. We should not cheat ourselves that simply because we have all these minerals and other natural resources, then we are rich. But here we are with all our rivers full of water throughout the year and passing near our major towns. But our taps are dry.

Most of our people still live without efficient water supply. They have to draw water from wells. This is simply because we are not able to exploit the water resources of our country for the benefit of our people.

We are not able to pump water from these rivers into our homes. In the abundance of water, the great majority of our people still don't have access to clean running water. And this is one of the Millennium Development Goals that we should be achieving by 2015.

When you have little, you use it efficiently to survive. You cannot afford to be wasteful when you don't have much. Sometimes we behave like we have too many resources, like we live in a rich country. Look at our government expenditure! In many respects, it is higher than that of many rich countries.

Our public officers travel in more expensive luxurious cabins than their counterparts in rich countries. They also stay in more expensive hotels than people of similar rank from rich countries. Our public officers also receive much higher travel allowances which they don't have to account for than their counterparts in rich countries.

For instance, our public officers are driven in more expensive automobiles than their counterparts in India. Yet India is far much more a richer country than Zambia. They even manufacture automobiles and have got transnational companies that own expensive international automotive brands.

But Indian ministers and other government officials drive very small cars. If one wants an expensive automobile, there is no need to push it on the taxpayer. One should buy it for himself and the taxpayer should only meet the
necessary expenses, and not the extravagance, of our public servants. Our costs of running government are simply too high. There is too much wastage and too many unjustified allowances.

Our public servants have gone to the extent of holding routine meetings far away from their stations in expensive hotels or lodges just to earn allowances. Meetings that can be held in their boardrooms in Lusaka are taken to the expensive hotels of Livingstone. Why should this be so? Why this extravagance? Why this wastage?

Our government procurement system needs urgent review because we are paying far more than we should pay for goods and services to the government. Those who do business with government are really cashing in.

We have departments in the same ministry acquiring stationery at totally different prices. Why should this be so? There are too many middlemen doing business with government who are simply buying things from South Africa, Dubai or China and reselling them to government at exorbitant prices.

We cannot claim to know how best the government procurement system should be arranged. But it is not difficult for us to know when things are being done totally the wrong way. People are simply ripping off government. We have public servants running small tuntembas under names of relatives and they use these to do business with government at wild mark-ups.

Even the practice of producing two or three or so proforma invoices is useless because those in charge of procurement just stage-manage the process, they manipulate things and in the end, the business goes to them or those whom they benefit something from. Goods or services that should cost the government a
million kwacha end up costing the government millions more.

Why should we be so wasteful when even those with far much greater resources do not waste them this way? In fact, the rich countries are more thrift, more accountable when it comes to public expenditure. They don't waste public money the way we do. They don't fail to account for public funds they way our public officers do and get away with it.

Look at the size of delegations we send to handle meetings abroad! Instead of
going for the minimum, we always tend to go for the maximum delegation allowed. Why? Is it simply because of allowances? And look at the behaviour of our public officers at such conferences or meetings.

Some of them would only be coming back to the hotels from shopping when others are coming out of the conference sessions. The only part of the conferences they don't miss are dinners and other evening entertainment. We have even senior officers who travel abroad to attend seminars, workshops or conferences that should be attended by very low officers, by clerks.

And when they get there and find that it's a gathering for clerks, they simply resort to shopping and other entertainment. This is how the taxpayers' money of this poor country is being wasted.

It is very difficult to understand why our government should be buying such expensive automobiles. Every other expensive car you see in town belongs to the government. What is the justification for this extravagance, excessive love for luxurious automobiles? If there is proper justification, we will understand. There are certain luxurious cars that are needed for diplomatic assignments.

We have no argument with this. We also have officers who upon transfer to another town are accommodated in hotels for very long periods. This is unnecessary expenditure.

To all this, add the retirement benefits given by the Chiluba regime to all sorts of people. Every former president has to be built a house! Every former speaker has to be built a house! Every former this and that has to be given this and that! Why should this be so?

Don't they know where banks are to go and get a mortgage? A man becomes president at 70 or so and after being president for three years, he loses an election and is forced into political retirement and the taxpayer should build him a house! For what? What was he doing and where was he living for 70 years?

Why can't he go back where he came from? Why didn't he build a house for himself? Of course, there are exceptions to everything. And the exception to this would be the first leaders of our country like comrade Kenneth Kaunda who had no opportunity to do anything else in their lives. They entered the independence struggle at a very early age and stayed in public service for the most effective years of their lives without giving themselves any undue material advantage.

These deserve the taxpayers' support and it is justifiable for them to be given appropriate retirement homes. Why should someone build Rupiah Banda a house with all that he could build for himself in less than three years? This is a waste of taxpayers' money that needs urgent review.

We are not against anyone living well. And in saying this, we are not against any individual. We are simply saying that this system of rewarding our public servants is beyond the ability or capacity of our taxpayers. And let us find a more justifiable way, a more meaningful way to remunerate those who serve us. And let us find the best way to keep government expenditure under control.

Let us find a way to combat waste and practice strict economy, that is the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality. We must pay special attention to economy.

The principle of diligence and frugality should be observed in everything. Thrift should be the guiding principle in our government expenditure and waste should be a serious crime.

A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our political leaders and other key public officers -an unwillingness to share the joys and hardships of the masses, a concern for personal gain and luxurious living.

This needs to be stopped if we may harbor any hope of getting the great majority of our people out of poverty.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy News Year!

Labels: CORRUPTION, NEOLIBERALISM, TONY COTTER

posted by MrK @ 5:34 PM