Maravi

Corruption is making life difficult

Corruption is making life difficult
By Editorial
Wednesday November 21, 2007 [03:00]

Corruption is robbing our nation of scarce resources. And without eradicating corruption, the conditions of the poor will never improve. We agree with the observations made by outgoing Norwegian Ambassador to Zambia Terje Vigtel that corruption in this country has made life difficult for many and has affected development, the health and education sectors, among others.

The presence of corruption is evidence of the fact that public resources are not utilised optimally. Our country may have economic potential but without economically exploiting this potential, our people will continue to be poor.

To exploit the economic potential of our country and improve the lives of our people will require efficient and effective utilisation of whatever resources are available. But it is not possible to utilise resources efficiently and effectively where there is corruption.

We say this because where there is corruption resources are never optimally deployed. Money is usually taken to projects from which it can be easily accessed and stolen. Projects where it is difficult to steal, money doesn’t go there, few are interested in such projects.

And as Ambassador Vigtel has correctly observed, corruption is one way of misusing development money and making the poor poorer. Clearly, if corruption is not fought, our people’s lives, especially those in rural areas, will not be uplifted.

Corruption has drastic evil effects and should be fought with all the tenacity we can marshal. And every citizen of this country should be made to avoid corruption at all costs and condemn it whenever and wherever they see it. Corruption destroys the social structures. And we should all have a mission to promote transparency, accountability and honesty in the nation.

However, corruption will not disappear by itself – it has to be fought and defeated. Honesty must be nourished but dishonesty or corruption springs up spontaneously like weeds and grows by itself. It therefore requires a lot of effort to promote honesty in the nation.

It is something that must start from the home, from the family and be taught to our children at school, college or university.

Honesty is something that we should inculcate wherever we are, be it at church or at the work place. We must nurture it and, like all virtues, it must be nourished.

We are not doing much as a nation to encourage or inculcate the spirit of honesty and accountability among our people. Today in many of our families, children can bring home all sorts of expensive items whose parents cannot afford without being questioned.

It would seem gone are the days when if a child brought home something whose source they could not properly explain, the parents told them to take it away or they would call the police because they didn’t want to be put in trouble.

Today, many of our parents would appear to be more than eager to take or consume things brought home by their children which clearly appear to be ill gotten.

Our churches are no different. Our pastors appear to be more than eager to receive huge tithes from members of the congregation who clearly cannot raise them from earned income.

In short, our pastors are not reluctant to receive stolen money as offering. Those with money, regardless of its source, are given a reservation seat at church congregations. This is not the way to build an honest society. This only serves to encourage and deepen corruption in the nation.

The situation is not different also when it comes to politics. Those with ill-gotten wealth and are able to bribe their way through elections end up occupying positions of leadership in our country.

But we shouldn’t forget that when they get into power, at whatever level, they don’t throw away the ladder of corruption that helped them to ascend to power – they continue to live by it.

And business cannot escape this corruption. It is also conducted on the basis of corruption. With corrupt politics and religious institutions, business has enough moral basis to anchor itself on corruption.

The other issue that we need to pay attention to is educating our people against paying bribes. One who pays a bribe is not different from one who receives the bribe, he may even be worse. People ask for bribes because they know there are people out there willing to pay them.

We agree with Ambassador Vigtel that people offering bribes should be the first to be punished and punished much more harshly than those on the receiving end. We say this because those who pay bribes facilitate and perpetuate an already dysfunctional system.

Corruption raises the cost of everything – of governing the country, of public projects, the cost of living and of doing business.

And this consequently impacts very negatively on those who are weak, the poor. If corruption is passionately fought, our people’s lives, especially those in rural areas and the urban poor, would be uplifted.
At this rate of corruption there is no way our government can be expected to be able to ensure that each individual has got adequate resources to survive, to develop and thrive.

We need to embrace the culture of responsibility and accountability and to commit ourselves with dedication and sacrifice in working to create a more humane nation, a more just nation, a more fair nation where public resources are utilised for the benefit of all our people.

It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental needs to remain unsatisfied. There are people who each day cannot meet the basic needs for a decent human life because public resources are being misused, are being stolen.

We must learn to be responsible in the use of public money and other resources. Corruption needs to be fought with all our intelligence and all our energy if our people, especially the poor, are to harbour any hope of a reversal of fortunes.

Labels: CORRUPTION

posted by MrK @ 4:30 AM