I HOPE as many people as possible have read the Agenda article by Bob Scott ("Malawi corruption is punishing the sick", The Herald, November 17) on the disastrous consequences of corruption, not just in Malawi, but throughout Africa, and taken on board the reality of the situation.
For far too long we have taken the easy and lazy option of throwing money at the problem and basking in false, self-righteous gratification without any effort to support the people in the rural areas desperate for help, scratching in the dust as the ministerial Range-Rover or Mercedes drives past – yes, the ones we paid for with our taxes.
In many cases all we have sponsored is either a dependency culture, at best, or a fat Swiss bank account at worst.
The fact is if we really want to help the poorer regions of Africa we have to become involved, but this means creating a "tough love" situation.
Rather than just giving the money we have to actually manage the projects and, more importantly the budget and the spend involved in the project.
This will, of course, horrify some government ministers in Africa, because it means he can't get a chance to siphon of the money, so we will get the usual protests of "we are an independent nation, we must control the finances/project ourselves", and we have examples where Governments have actually rejected offers of aid because they couldn't control the cash … so much for the love of the common people!
Scotland is a country with a wonderful record of highly skilled engineers, doctors, surveyors, site managers and so on and to include such personnel, on site, would add very little to the overall cost of the project, so let's begin dictating terms and conditions when we offer aid packages.
If our offer is rejected, regardless of the plight of their own people, let's highlight the countries and the culprits.
The people of so many countries in Africa have died in their thousands because, despite the billions we give the continent, the money isn't reaching the people who so desperately need help. Let's get involved, manage the projects and stop the despicable stealing of funds that is now endemic.
Iain Kennedy,
Flanders,
Gartmore,
Stirlingshire.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here