The whirlwind of interest in the Salima- Lilongwe Water Project has come in for good reasons. For starters, the secrecy in which the contract was awarded and the urgency with which it is being pursued has raised eyebrows, more especially in a nation in which urgency and crisis have been usurped as currencies of corruption.
Further, concerns over how the contract could be agreed before an environment and social impact assessment had been conducted as well as funding and the practicality of pumping water from Salima all point to a huge problem that need not be ignored in our quest to solve the water crisis in Lilongwe.
A few things, however, need to be placed in perspective in our haste to solve the water crisis in the Capital City and make sense of the multi-billion kwacha project.
The water crisis in Lilongwe is man-made and the government, through Lilongwe Water Board, should have foreseen this a long way back. Hence, it makes no sense to use a man-made crisis as justification for cutting corners. Laws and procedures need to be followed.
Worryingly, though, is the fact that there are too many voices raised; each fighting to be heard. However, in the mad rush to show they have the larger constituency in the water supply project to Lilongwe than the next guy, they risk losing sight of the bigger picture, which is that we are staring the storm in the eye and all we have achieved so far is to create the Tower of Babel.
Currently, the Attorney General has indicated that he is reviewing the contract, especially in respect of the payment modalities. And three parliamentary committees— Public Accounts, Agriculture and Natural Resources and Climate Change—are all demanding their pound of the flesh in the matter.
Granted, each one of them would like to protect their interests in the project, but there runs the genuine risk of shooting at each other as they grapple in the dark, which would not be in the interest of Malawians.
Having established that something is seemingly out of order in the project, what was needed was for the three committees of Parliament and other stakeholders to put their competing interests aside and speak with one voice.
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