How charcoal tax will fund everyone

Monday, February 16 

Life must be tough being a Malawian. It has to be.

Monday was pretty depressing. Malawi is a poor country — so poor, in fact, that some of our leaders have bragged about it as if it were some medal of honour.

But, some obscure website has rubbed it in for us and has had some Malawian apoplectic with anger at our leaders and the website while leaving others more despondent.

The website declared Malawi, with GDP Per Capita of $226.50, officially the world’s poorest. Not that it matters because it is not true. I know it is in human nature to derive some macabre gratification from realising that bad as you are, you are not anchoring the list of undesirables.

But you know, the only reason Malawi has scored higher on other poverty indices is that the country has been compared against countries which were either at war or emerging from one. Malawi has fought none. The Chilembwe Uprising is the closest Malawi has been at war. And that was a century ago. Or maybe the Chipembere and Chisiza rebellions.

All these were so insignificance as to have caused little or no ripple on the economy of the country half a century later. It hasn’t prevented us from being caught unawares by a cholera outbreak in the Lower Shire among a people reeling from the debilitating effects of the floods that killed and maimed, sowed helplessness and despondency and left grief and broken families in its wake.

Meanwhile, the worst is yet to come and we seem ill-prepared for it. Malawi faces a 105 000 metric tonnes shortage of maize to cushion itself against the effects of the floods.

It promises to be one long year, especially for a government on which the Judiciary has turned its back after turning down a ‘measly’ 22 percent proposed hike. The Judiciary, it must be said, intends to take their grievances to the other arm of government: Legislature.

But, so warns the Judiciary to the poor government, should nothing happen there, they will sue — to themselves and for themselves — whoever is responsible for their misery. This is the case of proverbial rat in the courts of cats. The verdict is sealed. You don’t need a prophet to fleece you off to know.

That’s the grim fact this poor government must live with or shuffle off. But it won’t be let off easily. University of Malawi students are demanding their pound of flesh. A 25 percent increment on their student’s monthly allowances is derisory; give them 60 percent and they would be on the same page. Do I smell another strike here?

Teachers already did. They marched to Parliament to demand the resignation of Minister of Education Emmanuel Fabiano for his ministry’s failure to alleviate their poverty for six months. In what should be the most assuring words of the week, chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee of Education Elias Chakwera told them: Keep on teaching!

Meanwhile, the government has hatched one of the most diabolical schemes even imagined to raise funds to buy that maize, pay the lawman his dues, keep the student quiet and give the teacher his salary: tax the charcoal sellers.

If you missed the news, the government announced to Parliament it plans to licence charcoal burners as one way of ensuring environmental sustainability.

The government may have pulled the wool over Parliament but it won’t on me. I know the plan: tax the charcoal burner and keep everyone happy—at least in the short term.