IS THE FREEZING OF THE LATE BINGU ASSETS JUSTIFIABLE? NO.. we are busy discussing the dead when those that are living have shown some destructive motives.

The talk in town is about Late Bingu Wa Mutharika’s wealth which according to assessments done by YMW Property Investment Limited of Yeremiah Chihana is said to be valued at K61 billion Kwacha.

Since Friday, 21^st June, 2013, The Daily Times newspaper has been taking us through the details as contained in an affidavit by Chihana filed at the high court in Zomba. The Evaluator alleges that Late Bingu Wa Mutharika had several bank accounts in both local and foreign commercial banks where some of this money was kept. 

These according to court documents are enough grounds for Government to demand K5 billion from the estate of Bingu Wa Mutharika in unpaid estate duty. Yes, the law must take its course if found that indeed the Bingu estate owes Government that much.

As we are talking now the High Court has ordered that all bank accounts belonging to the late president be frozen and the whole estate be blocked up until when this case is concluded. This is because Mutharika’s daughters started making some money transfers. This is now where I find a problem. The family being chased from property that was left by their late father, from all angles. What sort of justice is that? Is this something to do with the unpaid dues all it’s now coming down to political persecution?

Without trying to dispute the court ruling, I find it very illogical that government authorities rushed to the courts to get the accounts frozen and block the whole estate including houses, vehicles and other property as if there is evidence to ascertain that the estate in question was acquired through fraudulent means. 

After carefully analysing statements from the authorities and political and social commentators, what am seeing now is a group of people that have taken all the ammunition and are seen busy boxing a dead person. It looks like now what the people want is to get Mutharika back to life to explain how he managed to accumulate the wealth which cannot happen.

The evaluator has done his job but there are so many questions thus far that are yet to be answered, therefore all the conclusions we are making now are just mare speculations and as far as I can remember the issue that is in court is about the alleged unpaid estate duty. There is nothing whatsoever that has to do with the source of the money or any mention of it being stolen elsewhere. If that’s what people want to know I guess there are legal processes that can be followed to establish that because you cannot collect duty over stolen money and property. 

If anything I expected Government to move in so quickly to recover the money after putting all the evidence in the face of the current administrators and all of us so that we should all believe that this indeed was stolen money. Government has the machinery and resources to track down that, otherwise claiming duty over stolen money and property is not backed by any law, not to my knowledge. 

What I am seeing here is too much politicking to some extent no wonder the Democratic Progressive Party DPP within the week issued a strong worded press statement asking government to stop persecuting the party leadership in the name of Bingu. 

All we are doing as a country is wielding so much energy towards the dead that cannot rise up to give us a defence. If it were the time of Jesus I could have said that was possible. 

Do we want to take pride in pinning the dead for sins they committed when alive or we pin the living for their sins before they die? We pin the living after drawing lessons from the dead. 

If we are not careful, this issue will draw us away from the real issues, where chances are high that public funds might have been misused and continue to be plundered without mercy. We need to safeguard that. Bingu is dead, never to come back again but we have Joyce Banda as the leader, how far have we gone to make her government become more accountable? To never repeat the sins that were committed under the previous regime? 

We are busy discussing the dead when those that are living have shown some destructive motives in their actions within a space of one year. Instead of demanding answers from them we are busy clapping hands to their destructive causes while amplifying what we believe are sins committed by somebody who is not even there to defend himself.

I am not commending the plundering of public resources by those in power but as a country we need to draw lessons from the past presidents and put in place modalities that can prevent the incumbent leadership from taking after her predecessors.  

We have heard of K1.7 billion which Muluzi is answering to in court, now we are allegedly on K61 billion, who knows what we might be talking about after 2014 or whenever the current president leaves office?

Instead of rushing to the courts to have Bingu’s accounts frozen and block the whole estate, let’s rush in putting all stakeholders together to look at how best we can make the declaration of assets law more effective, the current version does not in any way serve the purpose of its framers.

Let’s have people declare their assets when starting their tenure and at the end of their tenure so that the law must stand to take them to task if they use fraudulent means to acquire unexplained wealth.

If the money that Bingu acquired was from our taxes it’s just a waste of time to label him with all sorts of names because the truth is buried at Ndata with him. But in my thoughts I am asking myself that if Bingu was worthy Billions, how come his will has given out only K74 million each to his three children and brother? I expected him to give out money in Billions as well. 

And we hear that he declared K150, million when getting into power. So let’s for once stop making claims that Bingu was a Minibus driver or was one minibus rich. 

Bingu was not just an ordinary person. Yes as a human being he had his lows but as a former president he needs to be respected even in his death. His children need to be treated as humans and citizens of Malawi and more as children of the former president. They are not criminals because no court of law has convicted them as such and their father hasn’t been found guilty of any charge at all up until when the court says so. 

Bingu’s children need to survive, they need to earn a living and their father made sure that he left them with enough capital to persist by making them administrators to his estate. Let’s put our focus on the current leadership and fight to triumph afterwards that we had a president who was different from her predecessors, after Malawians made her government become more accountable and demanded transparency by putting in place the necessary instruments to put her in check. 

Safe blood saves lives... Give the gift of life, donate blood now!

14^th June, 2013 is World Blood Donor day. In Malawi, as usual the day will go unnoticed, short of any activity that will help raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary, unpaid donors who give blood on a regular basis. These to me are heroes that have saved so many lives where without them we could have been talking of different stories all together, after losing so many lives. Maybe it’s because on the same day its Freedom day in Malawi so it’s being overshadowed.
 

What shocked me most this week is the discovery that I made that the Malawi Blood Transfusion Service MBTS has run short of blood (this has always been their story anyway) and Queen Elizabeth Central hospital has no blood in its blood bank. While I have been tackling this issue that’s when I heard allegations that sometimes blood from our public hospitals is being sold illegally to private hospitals hence the shortage of blood in the blood banks. I don’t know how true these allegations are but that’s what people say anyway. 

Let’s face it, all countries need a regular supply of safe blood. In low-income countries like Malawi, the biggest demand is for blood transfusions to treat severe anaemia especially in children under 5 years old often resulting from malaria or malnutrition, to manage pregnancy related complications such as haemorrhage before, during and after childbirth, accident victims and patients undergoing surgical procedures.  

In my Media Engagement work where I communicate science and general health issues to the public, I have come to realise that Malawians have the heart to donate blood only that they don’t know how and where to donate. 

I remember last month the MBTS crew came to our offices and they were overwhelmed with the number of people that lined up to donate blood. This tells me that all that we need now is intense awareness so that people must develop that passion to donate blood on their won not because the MBTS guys have visited their place of work or schools.

I remember when we were launching our Umoyo Nkukambirana program on MBC radio one as Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust under the Health Research Now Radio Project, our first topic under discussion was on demystifying blood. When we were doing the recording in the villages, one thing that was dominant was the fact that most people don’t understand why they have to donate blood, what happens to the blood when they donate and who should donate blood.

In most villages when you talk about blood donation the stories that you are possibly going to hear are stories of blood suckers. To them they can’t donate blood because the people who might be taking the blood are blood suckers, unless it’s at the hospital where their relative is in need of blood.

As we commemorate the day under the theme "Give the gift of life: donate blood", let’s keep in mind the following;

• Safe blood saves lives.

• There is a constant need for a regular supply of blood because blood can be stored only for a limited period of time before use.

• Regular blood donation by a sufficient number of healthy people is necessary to ensure that blood will always be available whenever and wherever it is needed.

• Blood is the most precious gift that anyone can give to another person – it is the gift of life! A decision to donate your blood can save the life of one or even several people.

• Yes. Remember that you will only be accepted as a blood donor if you are fit and well. Your health and well being are very important to the blood transfusion service.

• The needle and blood bag used to collect blood can ONLY be used once and come in a sterile pack to ensure that the process is safe.

• Does it hurt when donating blood? : Just squeeze the inside of your elbow tightly and you will have a quick idea of what the needle feels like to give blood. All you should feel is a gentle pressure, but very little discomfort.

Donate blood, save a life and become a hero!

Lets improve the health sector... Hands off FISP

Civil Society Organisations working in public health, HIV and Aids management sector have spoken to parliament. Their words are in bold “Reduce the budget for Fertiliser Input Subsidy Program FISP and Internal travel and top up the health allocation in the 2013/2014 National Budget”.

Malawi committed itself alongside many other African states in 2001 to allocate at least 15 percent of their budgets to health. So any initiative that drives the authorities into action towards improved public health care delivery system needs to be applauded. The system needs to be given life, it has been dead for long.

The call by the Civil Society Organisations comes when the world is fewer than 1000 days before the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and as a country we need to be moving towards that. 

Yes we need to cut some allocations in the National Budget to benefit other key budgetary lines but to reduce the K118 billion FISP budget mmmmh, I will choose to disagree there but agree on the internal travel budget. I know the legislatures wouldn’t even start tampering with this budgetary line because doing so will be risking their political career but the opposition dominated house will jump to the idea of cutting the internal travel budget. The FISP is the life line to their staying put in parliament but the internal travel is as well as equipping your enemy with plenty of ammunition.

I know the FISP has for years been dodged with challenges ranging from corruption, sand fertiliser, bloated number of beneficiaries and theft, just to a mention a few, but we can’t afford to do away or to reduce the budgetary allocation for a program that has contributed towards the achievement of households and national food security in Malawi which in turn has impacted on economic and social development positively. 

That now takes me to the attainment of the MDGs. The MDG Report 2013 titled “Assessing progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals” prepared by the African Union Commission (AUC), UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) highlighted the fact that Africa is making great strides in the execution of many MDG targets yet serious challenges remain on the ground.

The situation in Malawi is no different, we are on course yes but still facing more challenges in some crucial sectors.

Rated among the 20 best performing countries in Africa that are making progress on attaining the Goals, we are on track with MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education, MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women, MDG 6: Combat HIV and Aids, TB, malaria and other diseases and MDG 8: Global partnerships for development.

Goals which are off track include MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, MDG 4: Reduce child mortality, MDG 5: Improve maternal health and MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

In as much as we are singing success in some areas, we don’t need to relax, we need to steer the wheel towards the enhancement of such on track sectors and find solutions to address the off track targets. For example in order for us to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger investing in subsidised farm input is a welcome development. This in turn will translate into low food prices due to increased crop production and an increase in growth of the agricultural sector for economic development.

I have said it many times that the health sector in the country needs serious intervention. My heart bleeds when I look at the shambolic state of our public health care delivery system. Nothing seems to be moving forward. In terms of funding, we are at 12%, we can’t even make it as a priority to        at least allocate more funds to the sector but all we can do is fund President Joyce Banda’s many trips where she will be going around distributing cows in the name of development when deep down our hearts we know and she knows that it’s nothing but a campaign trail.

If we want to be talking about development, let’s improve the health sector. Let’s increase funding, we can’t fail to get the resources from other allocations I guess.

As the CSOs are asking the MPs to take on a hard look at the underfunding of the health sector and how this is increasingly putting the lives of their constituents and the citizenry of Malawi in danger I would also urge the MPs to not create another problem in yet another crucial sector. Both sectors need serious attention for us to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.