Frazer Potani, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi Photo: Elles van Gelder
The couple and their two children are based in Lamberth, United Kingdom (UK). In short they have a comfortable home filled with all necessary modern household items including four cars for use. They always have a nutritious breakfast, lunch and supper. They also have access to safe drinking water. When they fall sick, they get first class medical treatment.
Their children Jane, 18 and George, 15 are studying Law and Accountancy at Oxford University and North West London College respectively. Just recently, the man and his wife also bought five trucks that operate between the town of Reading and London in their country.
Their life is a paradise of prosperity on earth because they have a joint bank account, a cool $300,000 (about K45 million), and a farm with 100 dairy cows in Norwich in their country.
They arrived in Lilongwe about two weeks ago after leaving their flat in Lamberth about 20 Km from London to spend their holiday here.
Every year they travel to any corner of their choice on the globe to spend a holiday. In fact last year they spent their holiday in Mauritius.
Yes! This is a profile of Osborne Williams,55, and his wife Monica, 56, in gray swimming suits, sitting on chairs relaxing at Capital Hotel’s pool side in Lilongwe as they take sips of whisky and fruit juice from their glasses.
But at Kauma, a slum just less than 2 Km from where Osborne and Monica are relaxing, Daudi Sumaili, 39 and his wife Patuma, 37 live in a hell of poverty with their six children Amadu, 19, Abdul 18, Hajra, 16, Mariamu, 14, Twaibu, 13 and Saidi, 11 in a one-bedroom grass-thatched shack they call home.
Sumaili is the sole breadwinner for his family. He works as a watchman at one of the tobacco processing firms at Kanengo Industrial site in Lilongwe where he gets K9, 000 (about $60) per month.
School fees
The Sumailis draw water from a nearby polluted Lilongwe River. Amadu, abdul, Mariamu all dropped out of school because their father could not afford to pay school fees for them at a secondary school in Lilongwe. Only Twaibu and Saidi go to a nearby primary school on empty stomachs taking advantage of the Free Primary Education introduced by Malawi Government since 1994.
Since the family’s total monthly income is a mere K9, 000 each family member spends K37.50 (or 0.25 Cents) per day!
Therefore, when a family member falls sick the already little money that could be used for buying maize flour for nsima and relish for the family goes into a local grocer’s cash box for drugs to restore his/her health.
Despite world leaders holding summits where they dine and wine while exchanging jokes as they work out answers that would close the yawning gaps between the rich like the Williams of UK and the poor like the Sumailis of Malawi, the rich continue getting richer, while the poor getting poorer therefore living in two worlds apart [of prosperity and poverty] within the same planet.
A high ranking economic think tank in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development Ben Botolo however, said Malawi was winning the war against poverty.
“As a government we have made quite tremendous achievements in the fight against poverty to close the gap between the rich and the poor,” he said adding that Malawi was moving towards a positive direction towards poverty reduction.
A study by the state controlled Zomba based National Statistical Office (NSO) backs Botolo saying more Malawians are getting wealthier with the number of poor people dropping from 40 percent in 2007 and 2008 to 39 percent in 2009.
Using the Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS) method the NSO says this means that 61 percent of Malawi’s over 13 million people live above the poverty line.
Below threshold
In WMS method NSO considers a household as poor if its annual per capita consumption expenditure is below a threshold.
The method however, does not tally with the universal system for measuring poverty of $1 minimum expenditure per head. But one of Malawi’s economic analysts, Mabvuto Bamusi said it is difficult to fully detect actual poverty levels using the WMS method alone.
“The method has a narrow perspective and does not take into account some vital. The best instrument to the true picture of how deep-rooted the country’s poverty is could be an Integrated Household Survey (IHS),”said Bamusi also national coordinator for Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) an umbulera body of over 70 Civil Society [Non Governmental Organizations(NGOs)].
He added:”The problem with WMS is that it puts more emphasis on food availability at the household level while ignoring other important issues like employment creation, production and exports.”
Agness Chipasula 42, from Kayembe Village in Dowa a rural settlement about 40 Km from Lilongwe concurred with Bamusi.
“I think conclusions that poverty levels have dropped in Malawi are on paper and not what is actually on the ground,” she said.
Chipasula cited failure by most people in her village (herself included) to access safe clean water, buy pain killers like panadol from their health centre and pay K20 (0.13 Cents) for school contributions for primary school going children as clear evidences that poverty was still intact.
On her part Action Aid Malawi Deputy Board Chairperson Dorothy Nyasulu said poverty was still reigning supreme in Malawi.
Empowerment
“…and women are suffering more than men from the pains of poverty because they are less empowered at all levels than men,” said Nyasulu adding that women tend to be forgotten.
She disclosed that one problem contributing to snail pace of women empowerment in Malawi was that there were some policy documents that were just written in line with promoting gender equality or participation but not put into practice.
The UNDP Human Development Report reveals that despite Malawi making some progress in development in some areas still has a long way to eradicate poverty because the country is in the group of Low Human Development Countries.
Information collected by economists in a research and documented by the World Bank point to the fact that fight against poverty remains a challenge on the globe as evidenced by the existence of the gap between the rich and the poor.
The information reveal in one research that a cow in Europe is able to spend $2.20 per day from a tax payer’s pocket while 2.8 billion people in poor developing countries around the world spent less than $2 a day!
The economists further disclose that the richest 25 million Americans have an income equal to that of almost 2 billion people.
While assets of the world’s three richest men even after the recent fall of stock markets are greater than combined income of the world’s least developed countries.
They further disclose that the living standards of most people in poor developing countries worldwide rank bottom of the UN Human Development Index in general and even roughly equivalent to standards of those in the West 600 years ago!
No wonder every time groups of richest developed countries on the planet such as the G8, G20 meet anywhere worldwide, protesters are beamed on television screens across the globe demonstrating against the developed nations’ failure to fulfill their promises they had made to allocate more aid to the poor developing world to improve the lives of people stuck in poverty.
While at OXFAM, Kevin Watkins said his organization then revealed that Western governments spent more money on military weapons than aid meant to reduce poverty in poor developing countries.
“They spend at least $ 800 billion a year on armaments yet for just 16 percent of what they currently spend on weapons, the world’s poorest countries could meet the health and education targets agreed at the 1990 World Summit for Children: these would include giving all children a basic education, reducing child deaths by a third, and providing clean water supplies for everyone,” he said then.
Watkins further said that governments in poor developing countries struggle to offset poverty levels because they spend more on repaying their debt to the World Bank and IMF and other rich developed governments, than they do on the health and education of their citizens.
Reduction in aid
He also disclosed that Western Governments have been reducing aid to poor developing countries and said for example on overall, between 1993 and 1994 the rich industrialized countries spent just 0.3 percent of their GNP in aid, the lowest level recorded for two decades.
Watkins also then disclosed that unfair trade cost countries about $50 billion a year in lost export earnings, roughly equivalent to the total flow of development aid to all poor developing countries from the richer developed nations that are making it impossible for them to export their goods.
He also said if poverty the gap between the rich and the poor is to be closed among other issues democracy should be fully implemented in the entire global village at all levels to allow people participate in development, corruption stumped out, government take responsibility for providing essential services such as health care and education.
“Governments should allocate at least 20 percent of all their spending to providing the services which poor people need most, including primary health care, primary education, clean water and sanitation, provide primary health care and basic education free of charge,” said Watkins adding that all governments should also greatly reduce their spending on military weapons.
“Instead governments should invest in people rather than in death and destruction. Aid donors should also increase the percent of their country’s wealth going on aid to poor countries. Rich developed countries should also remove all barriers on trade to poor developing countries,” he said.
Watkins said unless the world starts narrowing the poverty gap millions of people face a bleak future.
“By 2005 the number of Africans living in poverty was estimated to have grown by nearly a third from 218 million to 300 million. By 2025 there could be as many as 1.5 billion people living in severe poverty,” said Watkins.
He added that all too often, rising poverty gives rise to violent conflict, refugee crises, increased crime, and trade in narcotic drugs.
“All [these] problems that do not respect borders and from which the better off cannot insulate themselves,” said Watkins.
Former South Africa’s president Nelson Mandela concurred with Watkins.
He said unless all governments on the globe put measures in place to close the gap between the rich and poor global security would be under threat. Said Mandela: “Security for the few is insecurity for all.”
The couple and their two children are based in Lamberth, United Kingdom (UK). In short they have a comfortable home filled with all necessary modern household items including four cars for use. They always have a nutritious breakfast, lunch and supper. They also have access to safe drinking water. When they fall sick, they get first class medical treatment.
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