Half the time one gets the impression that things are working in this country.
No. Half the time one gets the impression that things are going haywire.
Agreed; half the time things work and half the time things go haywire.
I am talking about Malawi, of course—the land of contradictions. I mean, the land of contradictions, lakes, the Shire River, stars, and what have you.
The land of Capital Hill, the seat of the Malawi Government in Lilongwe.
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The issue at hand, of course, pertains to the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) and fuel supply—need I add shortage?
Just after the 2023-24 rain-fed agriculture season, Ministry of Agriculture officials started saying that the 2024-25 AIP would be a success. They said they were that hopeful because they had started preparations for the programme earlier than normal. Why? They said they wanted to avoid mistakes of yester-years.
From such sentiments, people like me—and I believe I am speaking on behalf of Malawians when I say some Malawians—were made to believe that things would pan out well.
Well, that has not necessarily been the case. Come to think of it, by last week, only 16,000-plus metric tonnes (mt) of maize had been dispatched out of 104,000mt that are needed this year.
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This is happening when some beneficiaries of last year’s programme have been chopped off this year’s AIP list. With the chopping off, one would have hoped that the burden would, somewhat, be off the government’s back.
Nay! That is when AIP implementers are struggling more—and no one knows when the problems would be addressed. But that is the Malawi Government for you. It is always experimenting—sometimes experimenting with people’s lives. How reckless!
I mean, no normal human being plays around with people’s lives. But, then, the Malawi Government is not a human being at all; it is a going concern. There you go.
Now, while government officials are grappling with AIP issues on one hand, they are, on the other hand, facing another problem; that of fuel supply shortage.
It is now a month since the fuel shortage problem resurfaced. One whole month. One would have thought that the problem would be addressed by now.
Well, the problem has been addressed—and only in the minds of our leaders.
On the ground, the situation is not good; diesel can be available today, only to disappear the next day. This is also happening with petrol, where when it is available today, it will certainly not be available the next day.
As such, minibus and taxi fares keep rising every day. This is damaging to business, especially those who are engaged in small-scale business and commute to workstations every day. They keep coughing more money, as regards transport fare, but they cannot raise the price of their merchandise because people’s buying power has suffered a battering.
It is situations like these that, Dear Pain, make you [pain] unbearable. Till when? That is the big question.
The truth is that people hate uncertainty. They hate it with a passion because it affects their plans. For instance, they cannot plan for the future in an uncertain situation.
By the way, I think the National Planning Commission is equally in the dark as to how Malawi can address fuel supply-related problems.
They cannot tell me that renewable energy use is the way to go when they know that it will take ages because all Malawians embrace it [renewable energy]. They should just think about charcoal use if they want to have a picture of how ‘conservative’ Malawians can be on things they have become used to.
I have not heard anyone from the National Planning Commission talking about how we can address fuel supply problems using points listed down in the Malawi 2063 vision. And without any word from them, I can only fear for the future.
It could be that we have been talking about a future we do not understand.
That, Dear Pain, is another tragedy that has befallen Malawi.
