Politicians are usually good at being seen to be doing something even when they do not mean it, and are doing nothing about it.<\/p>\n
It is a tactic which populists and those in power, the world over, have perfected with ease.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp), which the government has been implementing passionately under the guise of ensuring food security in the country.<\/p>\n
Right now, there is little on the ground to suggest that, since the programme was rolled out, its objective has been achieved.<\/p>\n
If anything, the programme has succeeded in entrenching the culture of handouts and enhanced a vicious cycle of passive dependency syndrome.<\/p>\n
Certainly, this programme is not about empowering the people but making them more vulnerable and desperate. Politicians like it when people go begging to them for that is a guarantee of more votes.<\/p>\n
That is what the Fisp programme has succeeded in achieving.<\/p>\n
This is the programme that has always been dogged by logistical challenges, ranging from poor to late delivery of farm inputs such as fertiliser and maize seeds.<\/p>\n
This year, the government promised that, by now, distribution of the coupons would have been in full swing, yet it is the same old song: delays.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Agriculture has changed tune that the coupons would be in by next week, insisting that all was on track.<\/p>\n
But this is September and how does the government expect the poor and desperate farmers in the village to plan for the next planting season?<\/p>\n
Truth is that Fisp is a political gimmick meant to create an impression to the poor masses that this government cares for them.<\/p>\n
Of course, where billions of kwacha are involved, it is the ruling elite that benefits by awarding each other contracts for distribution of the inputs to those that are politically correct.<\/p>\n
The distribution of the coupons itself is selective as it is used to reward political allegiance.<\/p>\n
In any case, how can the government seriously expect a programme whose beneficiaries are a mere 900,000, out of a population estimated at 17 million, to translate to food security?<\/p>\n
The big question has always been: why is this programme still being pursued when it only succeeds in punching holes into the already depleted national coffers?<\/p>\n
We, therefore, advise the government to do the needful; leave politics aside, abandon the programme as soon as possible and channel resources to other programmes such as irrigation farming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Politicians are usually good at being seen to be doing something even when they do not mean it, and are doing nothing about it. It is a tactic which populists and those in power, the world over, have perfected with ease. Take, for instance, the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp), which the government has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53932,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53929\/revisions\/53932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}