What corruption has done in Malawi
For the past five years, people in Malawi have been engaged in nonstop discussions and debates about corruption which has destroyed the nation and its people. It is true that there has been some corruption in the previous governments, but not at the unprecedented levels being witnessed in the President Peter Mutharika’s, whereby, every sector and Malawian is feeling the pain. As it were, the bottom line of corruption has been the abuse by those with power of the taxpayers’ money. As a result, Malawians have been denied adequate services.
Unfortunately, it seems the DPP-led government has no clue as to how they can stop corruption. Instead, it has freely flourished and a very bad culture has been developed in the country that without paying something under the table, nothing moves. This makes poor people suffer more. For example, there have been rumours every year that for poor Malawians to get a fertiliser and seed coupon, one has to bribe those who are distributing coupons. Hence, most of the coupons are used by the powerful and the rich, leaving the targeted poor with nothing. The authorities might know about this, but nothing is done because some of them have also benefited from unscrupulous practices.
Corruption in Malawi has now passed the individual level and gone national. This is mostly experienced in the construction industry. People have talked a lot about poorly constructed roads and bridges which are washed away by the first rains. For example, recently a video went viral on social media about people in Lilongwe watching a new bridge being washed away in total disbelief. The question that most people ask is that, does the government provide any supervision and certification on roads being constructed in Malawi? As the situation is, it forces people to think that government officials cannot critically supervise construction projects probably because of having already been bribed. It is very strange that in this country, the government has never asked a contractor to redo a poorly done road. Instead, the president just goes ahead to open and put a stamp on it, then brags about it.
As already been said elsewhere, for Malawi to have meaningful development, the leadership must emulate Dr. Kamuzu Banda’s discipline and his desire for high quality in everything, including infrastructure development. This is why his works are still standing as compared to the newly constructed roads under Mutharika which are embarrassingly seen being washed away. Meanwhile, it is on record that in the early seventies, Banda asked a Germany company to redo Chilumba-Karonga road which was below standard. Failing which, he said he was not going to pay. The road was redone. This is an example of a leader who was not corrupt and had nothing to fear when demanding quality work. There can never be quality work if the contractor is dubiously selected. In fact, some contractors might have bribed heavily to permanently get works from government and give no chance to new and better contractors. Such bad practices have made infrastructure development to be stagnant.
Due to corruption, leaders who had nothing in 2014 are now billionaires after converting public resources into personal fortunes. With the current government, there is not light at the end of a tunnel on corruption. Let Malawians decide by using the ballot and bring change.
