At no time has the saying ‘in the abundance of water a fool is thirst’ been more apt than in the case of Lilongwe City Council.
The council has been confronted with a familiar problem and, to get out of that corner, it has proposed familiar solutions which, as experience has shown, have had little impact on the development of the country.
The council has had to grapple with shrinking revenues partly because of the economy and in part due to fraud and default on city rates. The development has seen the council scaling back on some essential social services it is supposed to deliver to the residents of the city. The residents have not taken kindly to scenes of garbage piling behind people’s homes and places of businesses, fire trucks that plod on their way to infernos and a road infrastructure more at home in the 19th Century than in the current one.
That something needs to be done is a fact accepted by all. What is totally unacceptable and deplorable has been the council’s lackadaisical approach to solving these monumental problems.
As an attempt to fix these shortcomings, the council has reached out to the diplomatic and business communities. In so doing, the council has missed the point by a mile.
The council’s biggest problem is not lack of resources; its challenge is its inability to put together enough resources to deliver the services because of unchecked fraud and unsustainable numbers of defaulters on city rates. What is disconcerting—based on a list that was published some months ago—about the defaulters is that most of them are either people of privilege or organisations of influence.
The city councils—Lilongwe inclusive—bear hard on poor market traders who can barely keep body and soul together, while defaulting millionaires and fraudsters have the red carpet rolled out for them.
The council must learn to harness the resources at its disposal. Lack of resources is not one of the council’s problems. Courting the diplomatic community to twin Lilongwe with cities in their respective countries will not solve the inherent organisational challenges that have seen it shamelessly holding out the begging bowl.
The city council has adequate instruments with which to deal with fraudsters and defaulters of city rates; it has by-laws by which it can force defaulters to pay up or leave.
The diplomatic community or twinned cities cannot by themselves deal with fraud or defaulters if Lilongwe City Council itself shows a lack of commitment towards dealing with those vices.
Time and again people have observed that the country needs to put the days of donor dependency behind us. Over 50 years of our obsession with donations have led us nowhere. In an age when development partners are becoming thrifty with their funding, the optimism by the council which hopes they would bend to their pleas is misplaced.
We cannot expect foreigners to develop the city to the standards we aspire for. Lilongwe City Council has the resources with which it can thrive without looking elsewhere for support. What the council needs to do now is to put its house in order and let the law take effect on defaulters and fraudsters.
Give the diplomatic community a break.
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