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.