MDGs, BEYOND RHETORIC
“It was an easy Budget to prepare” bragged the Zambian Finance Minister Ng’andu Magande shortly before presenting the National Budget for 2007. Talking to the media just before presenting the National Financial Plan to Parliament, the minister said he was carrying ‘a lot of good news’ to the general public. Some of the promissory issues the minister showered the media with were those to do with debt write-offs, which he said the citizenry were the major beneficiary as the ‘olive branch’ was being extended to them through developmental action programmes the country was embarking on using realised savings from debt write-offs after attaining the Highly Indented Poor Countries completion point (HPIC) status in 2006.
But putting aside the Budget speech’s rhetoric and critically examining things to do with national development under the theme “From Stability to Improved Service Delivery,” it is clear that most of the contentious issues contained in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the Zambian government under the New Deal leadership embraced, are missed out at the starting point of the ‘race.’ The New Deal leadership committed itself to eradicating poverty and hunger in their extreme forms by signing the Millennium Declaration when it came into power in 2001. The Government committed itself to offering people a descent standard of living they deserved as reflective in the great natural resource endowment of their country. The new government promised to provide ways of making the citizenry enjoy other human choices, particularly the choices of long and healthy life, to be knowledgeable and join the information explosion of the 21st centaury. And the Minister of Finance told the media that time had come for Zambians to enjoy their sweat. Get it how!
Phenomenally, or to sound a committed and idealistic government maybe, the New Deal Government, under the leadership of Levy Mwanawasa, embarked on MDGs ‘prima facial’ projects, some of which include: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP); Thirty percent (30%) Women Presentation in leadership positions; free basic education (from grade one up to nine); malaria eradication programmes; Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP); Vision 2030; and belonging to several regional and global groupings that are oriented towards poverty eradication and other ills of life. Therefore, the country’s Transitional National Development Plan was particularly built around PRSP, to make sure that proportions of the people living in poverty were reduced to 65% by the targeted time frame. And to be a bit practical, billions of Kwacha (or millions of Dollars) were allocated for poverty reduction programmes, though they were paradoxically consumption-oriented. For example, under the sub-heading “poverty reduction,” the Ministry of Works and Supply, was allocated more than US$8 million for the procurement of VIP motor vehicle consumables. WHAOO, Poverty reduction indeed! The VIP cocoon includes; ministers, their deputies, permanent secretaries, and chiefs, among others. Then how is the ordinary man taking part in sharing the ‘national cake’ in exclusion as promised by the Minister of Finance in his message to the public prior to the presentation of the budget?
Against this background, the Zambian Central Statistical Office in its Demographic Healthy Survey Report for 2006 indicate that on the basis of the current HIV/AIDS infection rate, more than 750,000 children are likely to be orphaned and possibly join the purgatory of streetism circus by 2015 in addition to the current more than 13,000 street kids. The Report further show that the HIV/AIDS infection rate was between 13-20% among the youths of ages 15-35. And in response to such ‘foreseen’ challenges, government under the Ministry of Social Welfare and Community Development has involved 31 child-related institutions like child-care and adoption societies, orphanages, street children rehabilitation centres, Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), Young women Christian Association (YWCA)- Zambia , among others. And under the above institutions’ poverty reduction programmes for rehabilitation and reintegration of street children, (after they had graduated from Zambia National Services (ZNS) camps where they have been taken since 2006 for skills training programmes) have been allocated a disheartening total of US$8 million as compared to the lump sum allocated for VIP luxury. But more to this ‘joke’, many of these street children rehabilitation programmes did not solve the issue of streetism because many of the children who were chosen to go for these skills trainings were not real street kids, but were relatives and dependants to some officials in the Ministry. At the programme’s worst, some ‘street kids’ were married and their husbands opened law suits against the ministry for marital interference and the programmes’ success is yet to be seen.
The Budgetary allocation circus does not end here. The Social Sector Developments, under which almost all the MDGs, which include: eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development fall, had a ‘Budgetary joke’ to share. Minister Magande revealed that in line with Governments’ commitment to improve service delivery in the education sector, the remaining 4000 trained teachers (out of than the 10,000) that could not be employed during the period the country was struggling to attain HIPC were to be posted into schools to offset the shortfall of teachers where in some schools, a single teacher managed and taught all grades.
Miraculously perhaps, the Finance Minister reassured Government’s commitment to empowering people through education, and he elaborated on the vital role the service plays in the attainment of development and MDGs themselves. He argued that it was not very difficult in the country like Zambia with favourable climate, excellent soils, and plentiful water, to feed all people and make them meet their basic needs. And when it comes to food, it should include appropriate caloric intakes to prolong living and services so long they (people) are enlightened through education on how to go with the chemistry than waiting for state intervention all the time. The minister further expounded that educated people are not defeatists, as they are creative and positive thinkers. Minister Magande further argued that an educated populace pursues opportunities and initiate change in order to have an environment suitable for new opportunities and they knowledgeably increase the value of their output per day or year and proportionally to state confers through tax. Verbal commitment, could it be?
A glimpse into the allocations to the Social Sector Developments section, under which almost all the MDGs fall, would however prove it all. Under Ministry Education (MoE) umbrella, poverty reduction programmes for the Ministry received about US$9 million for the University of Zambia’s (UNZA) outstanding bills from 2006, while the Research and University education at the same institution (UNZA) got less than US$18 million. Since the country has two public universities, the other university ( Copperbelt University ) got slightly more than US$6 million in the same capacity of Research and University education. Under the students’ loan and bursary awards, UNZA was allocated US$9.6 million in 2006, which was reduced to US$5.7 million and from US$4.8 million in 2006 to US$2.47 million for the Copperbelt University (CBU). Enhancement of more than eight thousand UNZA students’ welfare and learning got about US$6 million, while the Copperbelt University ’s three thousand four hundred got US$2.4 million. Against these allocations, the Minister of Education, Prof Geoffrey Lungwangwa (who is a former UNZA Deputy Vice Chancellor) told the Zambian Parliamentary Accounting Committee (PAC) that UNZA alone requires more than five thousand bed spaces to supplement the current three thousand six hundred spaces that carter for the whole students’ populace at the institution. And as an immediate ‘remedial’ measure, the UNZA management reduced the enrollment level o the university for the 2006/2007 academic year by 15%. Some reasons forwarded for this are that some students were forced to stay four on a single bed space sharing a single bed by making shifts on who sleeps up what time.
Considering the nauseating pictures of starving and malnourished children which has become almost the identifying feature in most of Zambia’s high density townships, there is need to take a holistic approach in improving people’s living standards in the country. It was this realisation maybe which prompted some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the country to be giving food supplements to designated centres like orphanages. Poor caloric intakes have compromised the health of most pregnant mothers and children and thus Zambia has seen a rise in the child mortality rate. Since there are many causes of child mortality, many instruments are needed to reduce the trend. Improving people’s incomes, strengthening focus on public health care, access to safe to drinking water, improved sanitation and education for girls and mothers could be some of them. As in the case of the other health-related goals, the development of health services, particularly primary health services, is an important pre-requisite for reducing maternal mortality. It is important that child bearing women attend health clinics. But in most instances they are prevented by long distances to nearest clinics and lack of medical personnel to attend to them even when they braved the distance. Worse still, their financial situations and some traditional dogmas contribute to the sad scenario.
In respect with the inhuman situations under which most children and child-bearing women find themselves in, Government in 2006 recruited 744 front line medical personnel and had other projects in far-flung areas aimed at harnessing the high mortality rates on the land. The health sector was for this matter allocated US$3 billion in the 2007 budget. But to the dismal of every patriotic Zambian, the Auditor General’s Office revealed to Parliament when it appeared before the Parliamentary Accounting Committee (PAC) that the Ministry of Health was the most difficult ministry to audit due a number of irregularities by controlling officers in the disbursement and spending public funds. The Auditor General, Anna Chifungula cited an example of misappropriation of public resources in a case where the Ministry of Health ordered expired drugs at a cheaper price between 2005 and 2006 costing more than US$5 million and spent US$5 thousand on Christmas cards in 2006, while more than fifty thousand Zambians were dying from malaria every year as indicated by the Demographic Health Survey in its quarterly publication “Nkwaku.” The figure is however predicted to rise due to lack of accountability by the Ministry as the then minister of health, Angela Cifire indicated in her address on the World Tuberculosis Day that some medical personnel in the Ministry of Health were selling anti-malaria drugs like coartem to businessmen for export to neighbouring countries.
The Auditor General further reports that at the Ministry of Health, the permanent secretary had allocated and approved for himself (not entitled) more than US$180 thousand for fuel for his personal vehicle and about US$7 thousand in 2006, while pregnant mothers at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) were giving birth on the floor due to lack of bed spaces and extra beds to meet the high demand for health services. Worse still, many government owned health centres often only give prescriptions to patients because of lack of drugs and thus one child in every ten born children die to minor curable diseases. In such an environment where misappropriation of public funds is at the highest peak, the attainment of MDGs in many health related circles is blurred. And according to Transparent International Zambia (TIZ) in its annual Corruption Perception Index, misappropriation (corruption) of public resources was more pronounced in the New Deal leadership of president Mwanawasa than in the previous government. Comparatively, the Index indicates that more than US$150 million were misappropriated by the civil service in 2006 alone against US$50 million in the preceding leadership, whose president (Frederick Chiluba) is facing charges in the courts of law and have been recently convicted and told by the London Court to pay back the US$41 million of the public funds he stole from the country while serving as the state president from 1991 to 2001. And in his address to the nation in March 2006, President Mwanawasa revealed that civil servants misappropriated more than US$0.7 billion between 2001 when he assumed office and 2005. To this effect, the president banned the use of the slogan “zero tolerance” against corruption because corruption levels in the civil service “was stinking,” hence he saw no need to continue using the slogan.
Considering the corrosive nature of corruption to social and economic development, there can be less achievement of MDGs in Zambia as the economy is mainly left with almost nothing for sustaining national developmental projects. The poor are the hardest hit when such happens. At the same time, the quality of the public infrastructure becomes lower in heavily corrupt environments. It is upon the government to of Zambia to put its financial management more clearly on the agenda in its dialogue with partner countries, particularly in discussions on poverty reduction strategies since many donors have in the recent pat warned the country to manage donor money well or they will stop sponsoring proposed projects to them because levels of corruption were alarming. Since MDGs are linked to each other and are mutually dependent, and being that almost all the MDGs are based on fundamental human rights, sustainable development is crucial in this call. This applies, among other things, to the fundamental right to life, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, the rights of women and children and the right to housing, which are only attainable with the proper utilisation of public resources in projects that do not compromise the success of the future generations. The question that immediately rings in one’s head is on whether Zambia is doing enough towards the fulfillment of these rights as a signatory to the UN Fundamental Human Rights (FHRs) of 1948. All one has to take into account in this analysis would be the level of financial accountability by financial controllers, and then the apt answer to the concern of meeting the obligations enshrined in the FHRs would be gigantic-NO.
Zambia categorically should put more emphasis on improving initiatives targeting specific sectors, such as good governance and social sector development, where most MDGs fall, such as education, health and poverty reduction, among others, especially that the country has recorded disheartening financial abuses in the civil service. The country need to set clear political priorities, with the ultimate goal of improving governance and enhancing public confidence in it. Improved governance is absolutely crucial in attaining MDGs to the part of Zambia because many people have lost confidence in the system especially after learning of the abuses going on in the governing systems. This scenario has worsened poverty levels and other social vices as people ‘utilise’ whatever is within their means to earn a living. Thus, poverty levels in Zambia is wide-spread with no area untouched, though it is more predominantly rising faster in the urban areas where categories of the poor has emerged as policies of the economic liberalisation pursued in the 1990s failed to create jobs. A number of those ones in formal employment thus found themselves among the unemployed. Equally, new entrants into the labour markets, especially the youths face unprecedented difficulties to get jobs since the main employing sector (private sector) in the country is mainly concerned with profit accumulation rather than training the new entrants on how to go with the jobs. The net effect of this has been persistent poverty and hunger interrelated with other factors, including the erosion of people’s asset base, failed livelihoods and poor access to infrastructure, unsupportive global and domestic economic environment and failing health, especially due to HIV/AIDS and other major diseases.
Since poverty and hunger are about people being denied their most fundamental needs and expectations, then there’s need for government to understand and tackle this problem, with the concept of people being at the centre of everything that is done. In this respect, there’s a need for a paradigm shift towards that which takes the human development model together with its associated concepts such as human poverty (which can be defined as a denial of the people opportunities and choices that are most basic to human development), places the well-being and deprivation of the people in their various dimensions at the centre. This concept provides and requires a comprehensive framework in which the poverty and hunger can be understood and interventions evaluated. This should be done to decrease malnutrition levels among small children who are often on high risk of having their physical and mental development impaired. The net effect of this is decline in life expectancy at birth, enrolment and literacy achievements. These reductions in the country’s human development status are a cause for great concern as they undermine people’s capabilities to deal with poverty, deprivation and hunger.
When it comes to access to clean water and good health, the Zambian water sector is considerably off-track in terms of meeting the MDGs. Challenges in water and sanitation include major inequalities in service delivery, low levels of sustainability and under-investment. In addition, there is under-spending of the already low budget allocation to the sector. However, it is a truism that poverty reduction is a valid issue in the wider sector, but the voice of the poor is not easily heard by those responsible for service delivery and resource management. Therefore, more real commitment from politicians and relevant professionals is necessary in order to address even issues of capacity building. The environment of the water sector (social, cultural, technical, economic and natural) is in constant challenge and thus these new challenges call for new skills in all stake holders in the sector for this right (water) to be fulfilled.
Government should create and maintain a stable macroeconomic environment that fiscally aims at reducing the tax burden in the formal sector by broadening the tax base through the development of a system of incentives that would draw in the informal sector into the formal sector, while at the same time reducing the tax rates in the formal sector. Similarly, government should prioritise its expenditures towards the social sector and infrastructure development, especially roads, telecommunication, among others. All and above, transparency should be held by continuity with Activity Based Budget together with an effective integrated information system that allows the public true and accurate information on the utilization of resources to avoid wastage.
In the same vein, in case where government can’t create employment at the rate of population growth, there is need for the promotion of joint ventures in retail business, manufacturing and / or establishment of a local development fund to help in developing Zambia entrepreneurs. Such indigenous empowerment programmes or revolving funds should aim at employment generation to new entrants into the labour market; be itself, formal or informal employment. There is also need to create an environment that supports public-private partnerships in infrastructure development and other developmental areas as per requirement by some Millennium Development Goals. Government should come up with programmes and policies that empower the citizenry rather than spoon feeding them and wean them when “accounts” dry as it is currently the case with Youth Empowerment programmes and Skills Training projects for Street children, which only pop up when real resources are available.
Much investment must equally be made in the education sector, so that people are able to understand and make positive contributions to national programmes. Currently, being that most of the people are not educated or lack better understanding of issues, they do not contribute anything to many programmes the country is trying to embark on as a way of alleviating poverty and other social and economic ills of the country’s plummet economy. These high levels of ignorance among the Zambians have for example hindered the clinically approved measures of preventing diseases like HIV/AIDS because some people associate it to witchcraft especially in the rural set-up. And currently, many HIV/AIDS patients in the country are abandoning antiretroviral drugs in preference to herbal medicine which is being popularized in most parts of Zambia . A lot of herbalists have come out in the open claiming that they have found the cure for the virus and some patients on ARVs quit the treatment for they have little faith in conventional medicine. Additionally, according to the 2005 Zambia Sexual Behaviour Survey (ZSBS) report, 13 % of Zambians have ever been tested for HIV mainly because many of them have not accepted the virus to be a ‘disease’ but something embedded into magic whose ‘cure’ lies in traditional healers and other ritual appeasements. Against this sad scenario, the report stated that there was also a declining trend in condom use among people with non-regular partners, indicating that there is very little improvement in risky behaviour. The report stated that despite the high levels of general knowledge about HIV/AIDS, there was a misconception about the pandemic’s transmission, a trend which has been seen a 38 and 29 per cent condom use decline among males and females respectively in their last sexual encounter.
Besides that, uneducated people add little value to the production sector. When they do, their labour is often of low quality as they have no expertise relevant in improving product quality day by day. They are equally defeatists, they do not have the resilience to rise again after a fall and they also do not have the required consultative mentality, which have helped other countries score impressive economic achievements by building on other people’s innovative ideas. But currently, many Zambians are not aware of many programmes that the country is carrying on. Even when it comes to human rights, illiterates do not know what they are entitled to by the law. In such chaotic scenarios, it is only the enlightened ones who benefits from the projects that are going on in the country. To be practical, according to the Environmental Council of Zambia’s Sanitation Department, in 2005, some residents of the Copperbelt province refused to throw away the fish that died from the affluent from the mining and other industries that was emitted into the Kafue River , which is a river that stretches across the country from the north to the south. Government had to use the Council and state police to confiscate the fish, some of which was being sold on the market to the unsuspicious buyers. Also, many illiterates have condemned civil society groups that are calling on the government to enact the new constitution through the constituent assembly saying they cannot eat the ‘piece, of paper. All because they are denied education for them to appreciate the role the ‘piece’ of paper can play in improving their lives if enacted through a mode that embraces the majority’s will.
Zambia therefore has to revisit and re-organise herself on how she would improve her scores towards MDGs because currently the pace is too slow. There is need for a paradigm shift for meaningful achievements to be realised by the stipulated time or reverse the sad snail space the country is currently moving. The public good should be the core of all the programmes towards the alleviation of poverty rather than personal motives. A holistic approach on the fight against corruption which has proved to be a biggest enemy of development has to be used for the ultimate benefit of the every one even the common man.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Do youths participate in meeting MDGs?
"The direction on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is too uncertain and the vision is at risk,” said the new entrant into the British Prime-ministership, Gordon Brown shortly after meeting the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the UN headquarters on 2nd August this year. “Seven years on, it is already clear that our pace is too slow and our vision is in jeopardy. There had been some progress after the 2000 Millennium summit at which leaders committed themselves to achieve the eight development goals, but half-way into the MDGs deadline, the world is not on the track to meet the MDGs commitments,” read the Brownism press release issued by the British High Commission in Lusaka in some part. And the UN chief Ban Ki-moon proposed for an improvement in terms of global workmanship in order to enhance and strengthen partnership between developed and developing countries for the goals to be attained on time. He argues that although time was ticking louder and louder day by day, there was no infusion of urgency that the targets require.
Earnestly, it is becoming true every hour that passes that unless something miraculous happens, most nations will miss out these targets because nothing much has been done in terms of working towards the Millennium Development Goals. As the Brownism argument puts it, the true position for the time being is that many countries are off-target when it comes to achieving these eight goals that most countries were only hurriedly committing themselves to meeting most of the targets within the stipulated time frame at the United Nations General Assembly Summit in 2000, without a real plan on how to reach there. And even though the former Exchequer has some hope in attaining the goals himself, many nations are actually off the rail as far as the MDGs are concerned. There is no need to access each goal categorically to prove why many countries including Zambia are off-track in terms of achieving the Millennium Development Goals because currently most people rub shoulders with poverty on a daily basis in different set-ups. To be precise, many households in Zambia have continued to live on hotbeds of hunger. It has become a normal phenomenon to find a family taking turns on who eats food that day, and who fasts and eat the following day. Jovial as it may sound, many Zambian households (especially in low income-high density townships) have resolved to making time tables on which members of the family will have food on their plates on a given day. Issues of shelter and clothing are the other source of bitter pills to swallow. These are some of the babies of unchecked poverty. Meanwhile, the level of this baby poverty has been static at 68 percent since 2000 in Zambia in official terms only, but signs of poverty are worsening. Although the Zambian population has increased from about ten million to more than eleven million, they are generally sharing the same quantum of basic necessities.
Taking a serious scrutiny into Zambia ’s development patterns and level of progress towards the attainment of Millennium Development Goals tells it all. Key issues to consider are those to do with the funding and implementation of policies in key areas in order to achieve most of these goals. Taking the social sector as the yardstick to Zambia ’s tally on the international Millennium Development Goals scorecard, the observations by Gordon Brown do not need any debate. It becomes true that the pace is not only slow, but also sadly off track. This fact does not need a scientific research, what one has to look at to prove it are the levels of maternal mortality rates, numbers of children leaving school, and the abnormal increase of illiterate levels. Ironically, every year some funds are allocated to the sector under the auspices of MDGs, but no real progress has been made worthy citing. The budgetary allocations made are mere dress code windows to the international world that the concept MDG clicks something in the minds of the country’s planners. No evaluations seem to take place at the end of every year to ascertain how much success or failure has been scored and thus make necessary adjustments to improve MDG policy efficiency and effectiveness. Equally, there has been no serious accountability as to how resources allocated for the goals have been spent. And since many people have little knowledge about the goals, no one seems to compel the leadership to account for what it allocated for the programme even after findings by the Auditor General’s Office on high levels of abuse of public resources by public officials. For example, the office reported to parliament that the current government loses about US$0.7 billion annually, but the citizens have continued being spectators.
The obvious issue that emerges its head in one’s mind is on why there is a seemingly lack of interest by members of the public in the programmes government is putting in place that are meant to address some the devastating challenges the majority of the citizens are facing on a daily basis. Some of the casual reasons to the poor public concern to what government is doing could be lack of concrete educational background which would enable them understand and conceptualize most of the contents of the Millennium Development Goals. The other aspect could be that of lack of proper communication by government to the public on what it is doing and for the people to give feedback on what they make out of it.
As a result, although millions of dollars (or billions of Zambian Kwacha) are every year allocated in the budget under the auspices of Millennium Development Goals attainment programmes in the names of Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSP), National Development Plan (NDP), Fifth National Plan (FNP), Vision 2030, among other key areas that can lead to the reduction of the levels of deprivation and lack of access to human basic needs, no actual progress is seen in the country. To these well meant plans, levels of success are not worthy pointing at if at all they could be there. Why such a scenario? In real sense, most of the skeleton programmes towards MDGs achievement in the country, had and will continue to record little success in partial and scant manners because many people, especially the illiterates know little about the goals, and thus have not taken keen interest in demanding for that which their leaders have ascended to at international level to show commitment to fulfilling the obligation given to them. Being that illiterates cannot read a book, newspaper or use the internet to keep up to date with both global and local proposals that can lead to good life, their knowledge of what is happening around them is limited, unless what they hear on radio or television once in a blue moon. They therefore contribute very little to the development of their society being that they lack exposure to other people’s ideas on how to improve living standards. This is one of the reasons why a specific goal on access to basic education has been included in the Millennium Development Goals package.
Then why is Zambia ’s illiterate level not dropping? Have the people chosen to shun literacy? Does it mean Zambians by nature enjoy ignorance? Not at all! According to Zambia ’s Central Statistical Office’s Demographic Health Survey report for 2004, more than thirty thousand babies are born in the country every year. But against this background, the Forum for African Women Educationist in Zambia (FAWEZA) studies show that only three per cent of the thirty thousand babies start school at the age of five. The other percentage comprises those who start school much older and those who completely don’t have a taste of a class room environment. The situation is worse among those in the far flung areas of the main cities in the country and in the low income townships. In March this year, FAWEZA discovered that in Kanyama township (one of the highly populated low income townships in Zambia) had about twenty thousand children of school going age, but only about eight thousand were in school mainly community schools run by the church. The rest are eking for a living with their parents and guardians in different archaic schemes. Additionally, the Ministry Social and Community Development under its child rehabilitation and skills training programmes have indicated that numbers of children rooming the streets has tremendously increased in the recent past. And one does not need to be told further on this, a short drive or walk along the Great East Road (the main high way road in capital city of Zambia ) can prove it. Pockets of school going aged children are invading the sides of the road picking all sorts of material that spell ‘value’ to their lives in relation to the kind of eking they found themselves in with their colleagues or parents. The other eye sore along other roads in the shanty townships is the presence of women crushing stones for a penny.
The poverty drama goes on, young men who were recently removed from the streets were they used to vend from under the “keep Zambia clean” campaign are involved in all sorts of criminality to ‘earn’ a living. Some of them are cutting people’s ears in the evening and give them back to the victims so that they can to take them (ears) to the State House to prove to the President that removing the hawkers from the streets and offer them nothing in turn was worsening things. The net effect of this is loss of moral fibre among the people. Some families have even resolved to marry young girls onto already married men who can manage to take care of both the girl and her family. Dramatic as it may sound, Government officials early in July this year retrieved three girls of the same family who were given into forced marriage in Mazabuka, a town in the Southern Zambia . Of these girls, one was aged 12 and the other two 14 years each.
If such habits are left unchecked, numbers of illiterates will increase abnormally in the country as some mothers to girls are showing high degrees of no appreciation to education. The misdemeanor may spread to other generations, and the country will be invaded by ignorance. Such a scenario may give birth to chaotic happenings that can plunge the whole country into economic stagnation and misery. Even healthy campaigns whose literature on these new diseases such as HIV\AIDS is mainly in English can be no use to those who cannot read. And even when such campaigns are broken down to one’s language, an illiterate cannot really benefit from such efforts. Brochures or leaflets can be cheaper ways of reaching people with information on such matters (especially in rural areas many of whom cannot afford to buy a radio or television for they are difficult to maintain due to lack of electricity), but who will read them? This puts illiterates at additional danger when it comes to use antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and the types of food that go with the treatments for they can be of no use for them without someone to read for them. For example, the UNDP (Zambian office) in conjunction with Tansinta, (an NGO dealing with rehabilitation of sex workers) on September 5th reported that some people who claim to have found the cure for HIV\AIDS were selling and administering crocodile fats to illiterate Zambians. As a result, many people on ARVs a quitting the treatment in favour of the fats which are easy to access. This entails education is cardinal in the attainment of Millennium Development Goals in any set up. Education is important for number of reasons. It opens people’s horizons, and enables them to innovate and create means of survival with high levels of sustenance and increase productivity. Even modern ways of preventing the environment can succeed when people fully understand the concepts and means proposed.
To all these glaring signs of being off-track, the Zambian government seems to be non-existent. From 2000 when Zambia ’s head of state ascended to the MDGs commitment UN clause, no single government school have been built in the country to match the numbers of children that Zambians have continued to bless the world with. Ironically, when squeezed by the neck over high school fees, it is reported in the media that the President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa told Zambians to stop giving birth to children they cannot take care of instead of troubling government. Sad, isn’t it! Then who shall save the poor Zambian? Donors may be? The University of Oslo Don professor Helge Ronning who was in the country attending the Professor Peter Kasoma Memorial Media Foundation’s Global Ethics for the Media in the 21st Century Congress when Mwanawasa made the statement, immediately ensured Zambians of serious doom because the West has and had NO intention of developing any African country. This entails that the Zambian poor are damned, because the president also assured them of no solution from his government to the escalating levels of poverty and other miscellaneous isms of life. Further, against such a presidential statement, the Zambian Demographic Healthy Survey shows that regardless of the emphasis that has been put on the need for improved health care in the country, maternal mortality ratio in Zambia at the moment stands at 728 per 100,000 live births. And the United Nations Population Fund rates this rate as the highest in the region. It then goes without emphasis that Gordon Brown is just being sincere when it comes to the achievements being recorded in terms of Millennium Development Goals especially to the Zambian face.
Worse still, there is no deliberate communication system either through the media or other means that has been designed to reach the publics with information on MDGs as one way of encouraging citizens to take part in most of the activities that would lead to the attainment of most of the goals. This means they are completely ruled out in the whole MDG circus which seems to have been taken immaterially by government. This removes away the aspect of millennium Development Goals with a human face. As the old adage goes, “the one who holds the information rules?” It entails that it is only the educated and those with access to information who can claim for what has been enshrined by their countries pertaining to the MDGs; the rest will die in the purgatory of ignorance and poverty if not disease. There can be little expected Millennium Development Goals success without prior understanding of how the affected people perceive the programme and how they fill their challenges should be tackled. Communication is important for any policy’s success as it ascertains how people would want their issues to be approached as the ones directly affected by them. Each problem has a unique approach and people must respond successfully to their opportunities and challenges of social or economic and those that help them improve their general livelihoods. But for the MDGs to be useful, knowledge and information about them must be effectively communicated to people, and messages to be fine tuned to capture each demographic make-up of the target audience so that they appreciate the programme. Millennium Development Goals should therefore incorporate all people at their levels, sharing general information of know-how on how to reach a consensus for actions that take into account interests and needs or capacities of all concerned citizens.
This is not the case in Zambia . Information about the MDGs only circulates within the domain of the Members of Parliament and few knowledgeable citizens and academicians who mainly use it for scholarly references. Much of the documents are part of the banked knowledge that is gathering enormous dust in government departments or attracting computer viruses in computer data bases. Sometimes even accessing these documents is not easy. And the already uninterested Zambians to reading rarely do they take any curiosity to access them when they hear about them (Millennium Development Goals documents) either in the media or from a friend who may comment on them by mistake during the course of some casual talk. One then wonders whether there could be real success in attaining MDGs in an environment of fragmented communication system, which is also inefficiently operating. The net effect of this is both the denial of the citizens access to such vital information to their well being and poor levels of conceptualizing the content of the whole Millennium Development Goals package. This means ordinary people will not be able to contribute effectively to means of tailoring information to meet the much needed developmental goals that could bring real change in the living standards of people.
Lack of information has seriously affected women most of whom do not have the least basic education. Most women also have little interest in current affairs as they are often confined in the kitchen and taking care of children. Some beliefs that a wife should be a recipient of information from the husband have worsened the situation. Although the scenario is changing among the educated wives, most women have lagged behind in terms of access to information for they are also mostly the least interested in reading news papers and other sources of information. They are mostly attached to fashion and cosmetic information, a situation which has given men a higher leverage in terms of where to access funds for investment. This becomes worse in an environment where there is no proper ways of reaching people with development information for them to take well informed decisions in their endeavour. This can be evident with the Youth Empowerment Funds, which Zambia has included in the budgetary allocations of 20006 and 2007. Of the US$8 million which was allocated to Youths Empowerment programmes for the fiscal year 2006\7, the Minister of Youth and Child Development reported to the Parliamentary Accounting Committee (PAC) that only about US$2 million has been used. However, the minister could not point at any actual youth programme that received funding from the allocated funds. And Young Men Christian Association Zambia General Secretary for Copperbelt Province says government declined to fund some projects that are being carried out by the association on the basis that it was already established. But on the other hand, government never bothered to design an appropriate communication system so that youths who managed to form viable projects could access the funds with ease.
A well coordinated communication system could encourage citizens at the grass root to mobilise themselves for development action and engage experts to assist them in solving unforeseen problems or misunderstandings that may arise during the development plan implementation. The system should be designed in a way that it creates a mechanism that broadens public access to information on development and cushioning extreme poverty at any point it emerges its ugly head. Proper channeling of information on attaining Millennium Development Goals can empower grass root organisations for them to take part in the process of meeting their daily challenges head on. The information can be blend in an ideal way to ensure that the ultimate benefits to be accrued from MDGs’ strategies have a wider reach and understanding. Such information can enhance careful analysis of each society’s challenges and areas that need prioritization among the eight Millennium Development Goals. Failure of a project in a well informed community can be easily followed, and mistakes can easily be detected and modifications can be made for the benefit of the whole country.
Lack of properly communicated information about MDGs makes the whole issue pertaining to them sound so abstract and unreal, or another scholarly reference package that has come to pass. They sound far away from people’s hearts and wants. However, Millennium Development Goals are in real sense meant to bring actual change in people’s lives by alleviating most of the social and economic ills that they face in their daily contacts. Appropriate communication should thus be used to break the grey and bring the concept of Millennium Development Goals into the context that people would be able to understand their actual purpose and appreciate them. This apt communication and suitable information about MDGs can serve as an anchorage of people’s hopes as they strive to earn a place in the world. For example, when an allocation of funds for the empowerment of youths is made, people should be informed on how they can access those funds and they should be provided with proper guidelines on how to come up with viable projects that are in line with one of the eight Millennium Development Goals and can sustain their well-being, bearing in mind that not every one can plan viably.
Systematically, provision of basic education should be made understandable and felt even by the poorest of the poor. Being that the aspect of access to basic education goes with the provision of school requisites that makes the attaining of the education smooth, there should be a continuous flow of funds to the effect and school managers must equally be informed on how to access the funds and the system should be made easy to avoid wastage of time meandering through state bureaucracies at the expense of academic progress. In this way, teachers can proudly provide pupils with the right education at the right age and within the prescribed time frame by the curriculum as too much time spent by a pupil in school means wastage of more resources, hence higher chances of stopping school before completion due to unforeseen eventualities. Schools should be provided with teachers and there should be infrastructure improvement for the learning process to be appreciated by both learners and educators. Without certain things in place, as it is currently the case in most of the Zambian public institutions, the point of free education will be meaningless because children will go to school but will have no teachers to offer the teaching service they need the most or other key requisites in attaining education. Ironically, in Zambia the declaration of free basic education has inversely seen the failure by government to employ more than ten thousand trained teachers since 2002. Some of the reasons that have been forwarded for this failure are lack of resources to capture them into the employment cocoon. As a result, many schools are understaffed to the extent that it is now a normal phenomenon to find a teacher handling all the classes from Grade One up to Seven in Zambia especially in rural schools. This has not only disadvantaged the education system, but has made the whole purpose of free basic education, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals hollow and chaotic.
And due to some missing links between MDGs and beneficiaries in many countries like Zambia , people with elementary knowledge about the goals are wondering whether they are real or another global debate circus that has come to make other national leaders sound idealistic. They do not see a human face when they gaze into the moat of Millennium Development Goals. Fragmented programmes by the Zambian government have worsened the situation for many of them are far away from the reality of MDGs. As a result, no one seem to have hope in them, even government planners who propose some budgetary allocations towards the goals seem to have no real answer as to how the aims of the goals could be brought to reality neither do they know how to implement them for the ultimate benefit of the citizenry. They seem to be practicing policy gambling. They are trying to make bets. It is either they win or MDGs get damned.
And the big question is on who shall save the image of Millennium Development Goals for them to be brought down to the level of the ordinary man so that they can be appreciated. Appropriate information on MDGs is very useful as it could shift things from the abstract development jargon to informing people on basic human needs that they are entitled by law. Information could be the best catalyst of change if the information apparatus are well managed and utilised for the benefit of information recipients. There is thus need to change people’s attitudes and behaviour as they approach the overriding concerns the architects of Millennium Development Goals want addressed for people to have access to good life.
Earnestly, it is becoming true every hour that passes that unless something miraculous happens, most nations will miss out these targets because nothing much has been done in terms of working towards the Millennium Development Goals. As the Brownism argument puts it, the true position for the time being is that many countries are off-target when it comes to achieving these eight goals that most countries were only hurriedly committing themselves to meeting most of the targets within the stipulated time frame at the United Nations General Assembly Summit in 2000, without a real plan on how to reach there. And even though the former Exchequer has some hope in attaining the goals himself, many nations are actually off the rail as far as the MDGs are concerned. There is no need to access each goal categorically to prove why many countries including Zambia are off-track in terms of achieving the Millennium Development Goals because currently most people rub shoulders with poverty on a daily basis in different set-ups. To be precise, many households in Zambia have continued to live on hotbeds of hunger. It has become a normal phenomenon to find a family taking turns on who eats food that day, and who fasts and eat the following day. Jovial as it may sound, many Zambian households (especially in low income-high density townships) have resolved to making time tables on which members of the family will have food on their plates on a given day. Issues of shelter and clothing are the other source of bitter pills to swallow. These are some of the babies of unchecked poverty. Meanwhile, the level of this baby poverty has been static at 68 percent since 2000 in Zambia in official terms only, but signs of poverty are worsening. Although the Zambian population has increased from about ten million to more than eleven million, they are generally sharing the same quantum of basic necessities.
Taking a serious scrutiny into Zambia ’s development patterns and level of progress towards the attainment of Millennium Development Goals tells it all. Key issues to consider are those to do with the funding and implementation of policies in key areas in order to achieve most of these goals. Taking the social sector as the yardstick to Zambia ’s tally on the international Millennium Development Goals scorecard, the observations by Gordon Brown do not need any debate. It becomes true that the pace is not only slow, but also sadly off track. This fact does not need a scientific research, what one has to look at to prove it are the levels of maternal mortality rates, numbers of children leaving school, and the abnormal increase of illiterate levels. Ironically, every year some funds are allocated to the sector under the auspices of MDGs, but no real progress has been made worthy citing. The budgetary allocations made are mere dress code windows to the international world that the concept MDG clicks something in the minds of the country’s planners. No evaluations seem to take place at the end of every year to ascertain how much success or failure has been scored and thus make necessary adjustments to improve MDG policy efficiency and effectiveness. Equally, there has been no serious accountability as to how resources allocated for the goals have been spent. And since many people have little knowledge about the goals, no one seems to compel the leadership to account for what it allocated for the programme even after findings by the Auditor General’s Office on high levels of abuse of public resources by public officials. For example, the office reported to parliament that the current government loses about US$0.7 billion annually, but the citizens have continued being spectators.
The obvious issue that emerges its head in one’s mind is on why there is a seemingly lack of interest by members of the public in the programmes government is putting in place that are meant to address some the devastating challenges the majority of the citizens are facing on a daily basis. Some of the casual reasons to the poor public concern to what government is doing could be lack of concrete educational background which would enable them understand and conceptualize most of the contents of the Millennium Development Goals. The other aspect could be that of lack of proper communication by government to the public on what it is doing and for the people to give feedback on what they make out of it.
As a result, although millions of dollars (or billions of Zambian Kwacha) are every year allocated in the budget under the auspices of Millennium Development Goals attainment programmes in the names of Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSP), National Development Plan (NDP), Fifth National Plan (FNP), Vision 2030, among other key areas that can lead to the reduction of the levels of deprivation and lack of access to human basic needs, no actual progress is seen in the country. To these well meant plans, levels of success are not worthy pointing at if at all they could be there. Why such a scenario? In real sense, most of the skeleton programmes towards MDGs achievement in the country, had and will continue to record little success in partial and scant manners because many people, especially the illiterates know little about the goals, and thus have not taken keen interest in demanding for that which their leaders have ascended to at international level to show commitment to fulfilling the obligation given to them. Being that illiterates cannot read a book, newspaper or use the internet to keep up to date with both global and local proposals that can lead to good life, their knowledge of what is happening around them is limited, unless what they hear on radio or television once in a blue moon. They therefore contribute very little to the development of their society being that they lack exposure to other people’s ideas on how to improve living standards. This is one of the reasons why a specific goal on access to basic education has been included in the Millennium Development Goals package.
Then why is Zambia ’s illiterate level not dropping? Have the people chosen to shun literacy? Does it mean Zambians by nature enjoy ignorance? Not at all! According to Zambia ’s Central Statistical Office’s Demographic Health Survey report for 2004, more than thirty thousand babies are born in the country every year. But against this background, the Forum for African Women Educationist in Zambia (FAWEZA) studies show that only three per cent of the thirty thousand babies start school at the age of five. The other percentage comprises those who start school much older and those who completely don’t have a taste of a class room environment. The situation is worse among those in the far flung areas of the main cities in the country and in the low income townships. In March this year, FAWEZA discovered that in Kanyama township (one of the highly populated low income townships in Zambia) had about twenty thousand children of school going age, but only about eight thousand were in school mainly community schools run by the church. The rest are eking for a living with their parents and guardians in different archaic schemes. Additionally, the Ministry Social and Community Development under its child rehabilitation and skills training programmes have indicated that numbers of children rooming the streets has tremendously increased in the recent past. And one does not need to be told further on this, a short drive or walk along the Great East Road (the main high way road in capital city of Zambia ) can prove it. Pockets of school going aged children are invading the sides of the road picking all sorts of material that spell ‘value’ to their lives in relation to the kind of eking they found themselves in with their colleagues or parents. The other eye sore along other roads in the shanty townships is the presence of women crushing stones for a penny.
The poverty drama goes on, young men who were recently removed from the streets were they used to vend from under the “keep Zambia clean” campaign are involved in all sorts of criminality to ‘earn’ a living. Some of them are cutting people’s ears in the evening and give them back to the victims so that they can to take them (ears) to the State House to prove to the President that removing the hawkers from the streets and offer them nothing in turn was worsening things. The net effect of this is loss of moral fibre among the people. Some families have even resolved to marry young girls onto already married men who can manage to take care of both the girl and her family. Dramatic as it may sound, Government officials early in July this year retrieved three girls of the same family who were given into forced marriage in Mazabuka, a town in the Southern Zambia . Of these girls, one was aged 12 and the other two 14 years each.
If such habits are left unchecked, numbers of illiterates will increase abnormally in the country as some mothers to girls are showing high degrees of no appreciation to education. The misdemeanor may spread to other generations, and the country will be invaded by ignorance. Such a scenario may give birth to chaotic happenings that can plunge the whole country into economic stagnation and misery. Even healthy campaigns whose literature on these new diseases such as HIV\AIDS is mainly in English can be no use to those who cannot read. And even when such campaigns are broken down to one’s language, an illiterate cannot really benefit from such efforts. Brochures or leaflets can be cheaper ways of reaching people with information on such matters (especially in rural areas many of whom cannot afford to buy a radio or television for they are difficult to maintain due to lack of electricity), but who will read them? This puts illiterates at additional danger when it comes to use antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and the types of food that go with the treatments for they can be of no use for them without someone to read for them. For example, the UNDP (Zambian office) in conjunction with Tansinta, (an NGO dealing with rehabilitation of sex workers) on September 5th reported that some people who claim to have found the cure for HIV\AIDS were selling and administering crocodile fats to illiterate Zambians. As a result, many people on ARVs a quitting the treatment in favour of the fats which are easy to access. This entails education is cardinal in the attainment of Millennium Development Goals in any set up. Education is important for number of reasons. It opens people’s horizons, and enables them to innovate and create means of survival with high levels of sustenance and increase productivity. Even modern ways of preventing the environment can succeed when people fully understand the concepts and means proposed.
To all these glaring signs of being off-track, the Zambian government seems to be non-existent. From 2000 when Zambia ’s head of state ascended to the MDGs commitment UN clause, no single government school have been built in the country to match the numbers of children that Zambians have continued to bless the world with. Ironically, when squeezed by the neck over high school fees, it is reported in the media that the President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa told Zambians to stop giving birth to children they cannot take care of instead of troubling government. Sad, isn’t it! Then who shall save the poor Zambian? Donors may be? The University of Oslo Don professor Helge Ronning who was in the country attending the Professor Peter Kasoma Memorial Media Foundation’s Global Ethics for the Media in the 21st Century Congress when Mwanawasa made the statement, immediately ensured Zambians of serious doom because the West has and had NO intention of developing any African country. This entails that the Zambian poor are damned, because the president also assured them of no solution from his government to the escalating levels of poverty and other miscellaneous isms of life. Further, against such a presidential statement, the Zambian Demographic Healthy Survey shows that regardless of the emphasis that has been put on the need for improved health care in the country, maternal mortality ratio in Zambia at the moment stands at 728 per 100,000 live births. And the United Nations Population Fund rates this rate as the highest in the region. It then goes without emphasis that Gordon Brown is just being sincere when it comes to the achievements being recorded in terms of Millennium Development Goals especially to the Zambian face.
Worse still, there is no deliberate communication system either through the media or other means that has been designed to reach the publics with information on MDGs as one way of encouraging citizens to take part in most of the activities that would lead to the attainment of most of the goals. This means they are completely ruled out in the whole MDG circus which seems to have been taken immaterially by government. This removes away the aspect of millennium Development Goals with a human face. As the old adage goes, “the one who holds the information rules?” It entails that it is only the educated and those with access to information who can claim for what has been enshrined by their countries pertaining to the MDGs; the rest will die in the purgatory of ignorance and poverty if not disease. There can be little expected Millennium Development Goals success without prior understanding of how the affected people perceive the programme and how they fill their challenges should be tackled. Communication is important for any policy’s success as it ascertains how people would want their issues to be approached as the ones directly affected by them. Each problem has a unique approach and people must respond successfully to their opportunities and challenges of social or economic and those that help them improve their general livelihoods. But for the MDGs to be useful, knowledge and information about them must be effectively communicated to people, and messages to be fine tuned to capture each demographic make-up of the target audience so that they appreciate the programme. Millennium Development Goals should therefore incorporate all people at their levels, sharing general information of know-how on how to reach a consensus for actions that take into account interests and needs or capacities of all concerned citizens.
This is not the case in Zambia . Information about the MDGs only circulates within the domain of the Members of Parliament and few knowledgeable citizens and academicians who mainly use it for scholarly references. Much of the documents are part of the banked knowledge that is gathering enormous dust in government departments or attracting computer viruses in computer data bases. Sometimes even accessing these documents is not easy. And the already uninterested Zambians to reading rarely do they take any curiosity to access them when they hear about them (Millennium Development Goals documents) either in the media or from a friend who may comment on them by mistake during the course of some casual talk. One then wonders whether there could be real success in attaining MDGs in an environment of fragmented communication system, which is also inefficiently operating. The net effect of this is both the denial of the citizens access to such vital information to their well being and poor levels of conceptualizing the content of the whole Millennium Development Goals package. This means ordinary people will not be able to contribute effectively to means of tailoring information to meet the much needed developmental goals that could bring real change in the living standards of people.
Lack of information has seriously affected women most of whom do not have the least basic education. Most women also have little interest in current affairs as they are often confined in the kitchen and taking care of children. Some beliefs that a wife should be a recipient of information from the husband have worsened the situation. Although the scenario is changing among the educated wives, most women have lagged behind in terms of access to information for they are also mostly the least interested in reading news papers and other sources of information. They are mostly attached to fashion and cosmetic information, a situation which has given men a higher leverage in terms of where to access funds for investment. This becomes worse in an environment where there is no proper ways of reaching people with development information for them to take well informed decisions in their endeavour. This can be evident with the Youth Empowerment Funds, which Zambia has included in the budgetary allocations of 20006 and 2007. Of the US$8 million which was allocated to Youths Empowerment programmes for the fiscal year 2006\7, the Minister of Youth and Child Development reported to the Parliamentary Accounting Committee (PAC) that only about US$2 million has been used. However, the minister could not point at any actual youth programme that received funding from the allocated funds. And Young Men Christian Association Zambia General Secretary for Copperbelt Province says government declined to fund some projects that are being carried out by the association on the basis that it was already established. But on the other hand, government never bothered to design an appropriate communication system so that youths who managed to form viable projects could access the funds with ease.
A well coordinated communication system could encourage citizens at the grass root to mobilise themselves for development action and engage experts to assist them in solving unforeseen problems or misunderstandings that may arise during the development plan implementation. The system should be designed in a way that it creates a mechanism that broadens public access to information on development and cushioning extreme poverty at any point it emerges its ugly head. Proper channeling of information on attaining Millennium Development Goals can empower grass root organisations for them to take part in the process of meeting their daily challenges head on. The information can be blend in an ideal way to ensure that the ultimate benefits to be accrued from MDGs’ strategies have a wider reach and understanding. Such information can enhance careful analysis of each society’s challenges and areas that need prioritization among the eight Millennium Development Goals. Failure of a project in a well informed community can be easily followed, and mistakes can easily be detected and modifications can be made for the benefit of the whole country.
Lack of properly communicated information about MDGs makes the whole issue pertaining to them sound so abstract and unreal, or another scholarly reference package that has come to pass. They sound far away from people’s hearts and wants. However, Millennium Development Goals are in real sense meant to bring actual change in people’s lives by alleviating most of the social and economic ills that they face in their daily contacts. Appropriate communication should thus be used to break the grey and bring the concept of Millennium Development Goals into the context that people would be able to understand their actual purpose and appreciate them. This apt communication and suitable information about MDGs can serve as an anchorage of people’s hopes as they strive to earn a place in the world. For example, when an allocation of funds for the empowerment of youths is made, people should be informed on how they can access those funds and they should be provided with proper guidelines on how to come up with viable projects that are in line with one of the eight Millennium Development Goals and can sustain their well-being, bearing in mind that not every one can plan viably.
Systematically, provision of basic education should be made understandable and felt even by the poorest of the poor. Being that the aspect of access to basic education goes with the provision of school requisites that makes the attaining of the education smooth, there should be a continuous flow of funds to the effect and school managers must equally be informed on how to access the funds and the system should be made easy to avoid wastage of time meandering through state bureaucracies at the expense of academic progress. In this way, teachers can proudly provide pupils with the right education at the right age and within the prescribed time frame by the curriculum as too much time spent by a pupil in school means wastage of more resources, hence higher chances of stopping school before completion due to unforeseen eventualities. Schools should be provided with teachers and there should be infrastructure improvement for the learning process to be appreciated by both learners and educators. Without certain things in place, as it is currently the case in most of the Zambian public institutions, the point of free education will be meaningless because children will go to school but will have no teachers to offer the teaching service they need the most or other key requisites in attaining education. Ironically, in Zambia the declaration of free basic education has inversely seen the failure by government to employ more than ten thousand trained teachers since 2002. Some of the reasons that have been forwarded for this failure are lack of resources to capture them into the employment cocoon. As a result, many schools are understaffed to the extent that it is now a normal phenomenon to find a teacher handling all the classes from Grade One up to Seven in Zambia especially in rural schools. This has not only disadvantaged the education system, but has made the whole purpose of free basic education, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals hollow and chaotic.
And due to some missing links between MDGs and beneficiaries in many countries like Zambia , people with elementary knowledge about the goals are wondering whether they are real or another global debate circus that has come to make other national leaders sound idealistic. They do not see a human face when they gaze into the moat of Millennium Development Goals. Fragmented programmes by the Zambian government have worsened the situation for many of them are far away from the reality of MDGs. As a result, no one seem to have hope in them, even government planners who propose some budgetary allocations towards the goals seem to have no real answer as to how the aims of the goals could be brought to reality neither do they know how to implement them for the ultimate benefit of the citizenry. They seem to be practicing policy gambling. They are trying to make bets. It is either they win or MDGs get damned.
And the big question is on who shall save the image of Millennium Development Goals for them to be brought down to the level of the ordinary man so that they can be appreciated. Appropriate information on MDGs is very useful as it could shift things from the abstract development jargon to informing people on basic human needs that they are entitled by law. Information could be the best catalyst of change if the information apparatus are well managed and utilised for the benefit of information recipients. There is thus need to change people’s attitudes and behaviour as they approach the overriding concerns the architects of Millennium Development Goals want addressed for people to have access to good life.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Youths' ability to access food
By Clive Siachiyako
Bravo! With the high food prices in the country, the phrase man shall not live by bread alone makes more sense. It is too expensive to have three meals a day. In fact, this is time for more fasting so that the little food households have does not finish fast. When the life gets tougher, you change the strategy. Fasting could be the way to go, argues John Bull.
As the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) argues it, the current upward trends in food prices pose serious challenges to human development and it requires immediate strategic planning and responses. In light of its monthly Basic Need Basket research, JCTR Social Conditions Programme Coordinator, Miniva Chibuye said the current rapid increases in food prices in the country were posing serious challenges to human development.
Ms Chibuye argued that the source of these price changes could be attributed to various factors, both internal and external.
“From the time of independence, most African countries have found it difficult to create “buffers” to safeguard them against external economic shocks, such as global food price increases, crude oil, etc. However, it is also internal shocks such as droughts, floods, etc., that have made external shocks find reinforcement at the national level. The manifestation of these shocks invariably and unfortunately undermines human development through making basic needs unaffordable,” she said.
Through its monthly research -- designed in a simple but realistic way in that prices are gathered from retail outlets where the majority of the Zambian people go to shop, averages calculated and presented in a format easy to understand -- the JCTR has presented to the Zambian people the monthly Basic Needs Basket to give a picture of current situation of affordability or lack thereof of basic needs for decent human survival.
The February 2008 Basic Needs Basket, has shown an unprecedented increase in the cost of basic food. Reported at costing an average of K596,000 in January, the cost of basic food is K654,750 at the end of February. This represents a huge increase of K58,750. Notable increases were recorded in the price of a 25Kg bag of breakfast mealie meal which increased by K4,700 to currently costing an average of K41,000 compared to K36,300 in January.
Also the price of a kilogramme of dry fish increased to an average of K50, 200 from K34, 400 in January. The price of 2 litres of cooking oil increased by K4, 900 from K18, 100 to K23,000 and bread -- after periods of relative price stability -- has increased by K300 to currently costing an average of K3,200. Green vegetables, tomatoes and onion also recorded increases.
While global upward trends of prices – reported to have increased by 40 percent -- could have an impact at the national level, it must be recognised that there are also seasonal factors to explain the current upward changes in prices. Historically in Zambia, there has been a tendency of upward changes in the price of food items beginning at the last quarter of each year all the way up to the harvest time. The obvious and common underlying factor to explain this scenario is that it has to do with how much is available on the market.
Ms Chibuye said life was becoming more miserable since human living conditions were not only explained in relation to food needs.
She said there are also non-food needs that have to be met, and when the costs of wash and bath soap, housing, electricity, and the like, are added to cost of basic food, the total cost of the basic needs basket amounts to K1, 870,650.
Ms Chibuye further said given current upward trends in prices of food items, the recent recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Estimates to have the Tax Exemption Threshold proposed at K600, 000 adjusted to K1, 000,000 is an apt moral and ethical response to the challenge of human development in Zambia.
She said since the current situation of cost of living is known, the biggest question was how to address such situations in ways that would not just respond to immediate needs but also to long-term needs.
“It appears,” says Miniva Chibuye, “what is required are holistic approaches to national development.” This calls for good agricultural practice that incorporates various dimensions.”
Ms Chibuye said it however implied, that for long-term benefits to be realized, there was need to pay much attention to the development of peoples’ skills through a sound education system, and ensuring that people led healthy lives.
She certain benefits from copper mining cannot be felt significantly in a situation where food prices were rising beyond what was affordable by many households.
Bravo! With the high food prices in the country, the phrase man shall not live by bread alone makes more sense. It is too expensive to have three meals a day. In fact, this is time for more fasting so that the little food households have does not finish fast. When the life gets tougher, you change the strategy. Fasting could be the way to go, argues John Bull.
As the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) argues it, the current upward trends in food prices pose serious challenges to human development and it requires immediate strategic planning and responses. In light of its monthly Basic Need Basket research, JCTR Social Conditions Programme Coordinator, Miniva Chibuye said the current rapid increases in food prices in the country were posing serious challenges to human development.
Ms Chibuye argued that the source of these price changes could be attributed to various factors, both internal and external.
“From the time of independence, most African countries have found it difficult to create “buffers” to safeguard them against external economic shocks, such as global food price increases, crude oil, etc. However, it is also internal shocks such as droughts, floods, etc., that have made external shocks find reinforcement at the national level. The manifestation of these shocks invariably and unfortunately undermines human development through making basic needs unaffordable,” she said.
Through its monthly research -- designed in a simple but realistic way in that prices are gathered from retail outlets where the majority of the Zambian people go to shop, averages calculated and presented in a format easy to understand -- the JCTR has presented to the Zambian people the monthly Basic Needs Basket to give a picture of current situation of affordability or lack thereof of basic needs for decent human survival.
The February 2008 Basic Needs Basket, has shown an unprecedented increase in the cost of basic food. Reported at costing an average of K596,000 in January, the cost of basic food is K654,750 at the end of February. This represents a huge increase of K58,750. Notable increases were recorded in the price of a 25Kg bag of breakfast mealie meal which increased by K4,700 to currently costing an average of K41,000 compared to K36,300 in January.
Also the price of a kilogramme of dry fish increased to an average of K50, 200 from K34, 400 in January. The price of 2 litres of cooking oil increased by K4, 900 from K18, 100 to K23,000 and bread -- after periods of relative price stability -- has increased by K300 to currently costing an average of K3,200. Green vegetables, tomatoes and onion also recorded increases.
While global upward trends of prices – reported to have increased by 40 percent -- could have an impact at the national level, it must be recognised that there are also seasonal factors to explain the current upward changes in prices. Historically in Zambia, there has been a tendency of upward changes in the price of food items beginning at the last quarter of each year all the way up to the harvest time. The obvious and common underlying factor to explain this scenario is that it has to do with how much is available on the market.
Ms Chibuye said life was becoming more miserable since human living conditions were not only explained in relation to food needs.
She said there are also non-food needs that have to be met, and when the costs of wash and bath soap, housing, electricity, and the like, are added to cost of basic food, the total cost of the basic needs basket amounts to K1, 870,650.
Ms Chibuye further said given current upward trends in prices of food items, the recent recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Estimates to have the Tax Exemption Threshold proposed at K600, 000 adjusted to K1, 000,000 is an apt moral and ethical response to the challenge of human development in Zambia.
She said since the current situation of cost of living is known, the biggest question was how to address such situations in ways that would not just respond to immediate needs but also to long-term needs.
“It appears,” says Miniva Chibuye, “what is required are holistic approaches to national development.” This calls for good agricultural practice that incorporates various dimensions.”
Ms Chibuye said it however implied, that for long-term benefits to be realized, there was need to pay much attention to the development of peoples’ skills through a sound education system, and ensuring that people led healthy lives.
She certain benefits from copper mining cannot be felt significantly in a situation where food prices were rising beyond what was affordable by many households.
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