Dear judge Mbadwa,
My lord, we are perpetually being reminded that Nyasaland enjoys the status of a nation that hardly cares about maintaining high standards.
The events of the past few weeks are not in any way suggesting that our standards have gone down, no! They only confirm what we are subjected to every day, poor delivery of services.
As we celebrate our Independence Day today, you get a feeling that the majority of the people operate at half-mast and they are okay with it.
To put the matter into perspective, a story is told of a member of a milk bulking group who sells their milk to dairy companies in some Southern province district.
The milk buyers, after noting that they were getting a raw deal, had in particular asked each farmer to first drink part of the milk they had brought before they could buy it.
But hell broke loose as some milk producers did not take that suggestion kindly.
There was a particular milk producer, my lord, who got agitated by this development and started sweating profusely, shouting on top of his voice that “if no one is ready to buy our milk, we will take it back?”
The buyers did not relent and this poor milk producer left the premises with his ‘milk’ and did not return to sell it again.
My lord, the moral of the story is that most Nyasas are ready to feed others filth they cannot consume themselves.
The metaphor ‘if you cannot eat it, don’t dish it out’ should be our guiding principle in serving others.
It should not always take the inspections of the Nyasaland Bureau of Standards for eateries or food stores to be forced to improve their standards.
Integrity requires that standards should always be maintained even in the absence of inspectors or authorities.
My lord, I don’t think eating junkie, in the literal sense of the word, should be part of the national psyche, but as long as we have business owners who are only interested in profiteering, unsuspecting people will be consuming filth.
Then we have numerous employers who treat indigenous Nyasas as the scum of the earth who need to be exploited at an available opportunity.
My lord, the fact that the unemployment rate is astronomically increasing is no excuse for abusing the people who work for us.
Yes, most of these people are desperately looking for some money to keep them going amid a high cost of living, but they have dignity too.
My lord, it is sad that the exploiters deliberately forget that the labour sector functions based on labour laws and regulations, something that prescribes employers’ responsibilities and ensures fair treatment of workers in workplaces.
My lord, it is high time that the slumbering employees and consumers woke up to demand what rightly belongs to them.
Otherwise, the modern day coloniser will continue feeding us garbage and abusing us to enrich himself or herself.
Regards,
John Citizen.
