Functioning at snail’s pace and agenda 2063

Pres ident Lazarus C h a k we r a o n c e again conveyed his frustration with Malawi’s slow-moving progress, blaming it on the culture of ‘slowness’ in doing things by some Malawians working in the public service.

Addressing the 2024 Dynamic Leaders and Gatekeepers Forum in Lilongwe last week, he said as a people Malawians talk at a snail’s pace, work at a snail’s pace and function at a snail’s pace, a move he said has crippled the public service and national development in the past 60 years.

Now, in saying that most Malawians function at a snail’s pace, the President was emphasising that the culprits, including politicians, contractors and others in the government and the private sector, operate very slowly when they can work much more quickly.

in the past four years, commitment to reduce some presidential powers and doing away with nepotism and cronyism in politics.

He said not much progress has come out of such issues. To cover up the snail mentality in execution processes, politicians in power always demand more time from voters to fix things and blame previous administrations for almost every problem Malawi faces today.

This takes us back to Malawi’s unchanging political culture, which has manifested for 60 years and is characterised by lip-ser vicing, finger-pointing, name-calling and mudslinging, among others.

Much as we agree with the President that laissez-faire attitudes are destroying this country, his government also needs to put in place proper mechanisms that can end slowness in the public service once and for all.

Already, his regime is working behind schedule on many fronts and that is an open secret. If you doubt it, ask those who rode high on hopes that things would change for the better by now after removing the previous regime in 2020. some will tell you their expectations changed.

However, there i s s t i l l more room for improvement by those in of fice now and one of the areas they can focus on to facilitate this transformation is mindset change.

Malawians must learn to support the government by playing constructive roles to end this culture of snail-pacing in public offices for national progress.

This includes prioritising appointments of public officers on merit, those that have the energy, capacity, skill and stamina to deliver on time, and disciplining those that appear to be culpri ts regardless of whether or not they are politically or financially connected to the powers that be.

S u r e l y we c a n n ot continue doing business as usual in the public sector and still expect to make tangible strides that can catapult our country to the levels of Rwanda and other countries that have rapidly transformed e c o n o m i c a l l y a n d socially over the years because they prioritise seriousness.

As I said the other day, we joke too much as a nation, but it is never too late to stop the jokes and learn to do things seriously as our friends within the region and the continent did a long time ago.

Only then can we start celebrating that this country is on the right path to achieving agenda 2063, the country’s long-term development blueprint, or else we can just forget about this ambition.