STUDENTS ANALYSTS AND WRITERS NETWORK UNIVERSITY OF MAKENI “CREATING A WORLD WITHOUT POVERTY (WITH A TARGET TO “BUILD A MESIUM TO DESPLAY THE HORRORS OF POVERTY”) Author: A. Sesay Reviewing the SierraLeonean context. In 1983 Prof. Muhammad Yunus head of Rural Economic Programme at Chittagong University tested a viable tool for ending poverty in rural Bangladesh. He is like a realist who knows the stagnating causes of poverty and applies himself to resolving it by introducing a micro lending programme for the rural poor. His ideology recorded significant improvement on the lives of the poor. Part of his success stories were the establishment of the Grameen Bank, a great reduction of poverty in Bangladesh, empowering the disadvantaged especially women to move from the circle of low income to high income, from low savings to more savings, from no investment to more investments. His imaginations of having a poverty museum in every nation to “display the horrors of poverty” highlight the possibility of getting out of poverty within the shortest time depending on our readiness. With reference to the turning over of countries like; China, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and others whose determined effort has brought about a dramatic change on their economies. Vietnam, for instance, within eight years reverse their poverty status from 58 percent to 20 percent. All we need, as he suggested, is the willingness combine with leaders preparedness to depreciate poverty. Apart from Prof. Yunus dream and effort, world leaders have also consented to ending poverty with their signing of the UN summit in 20002 that stressed on eight goals ranging from halving poverty, ensuring equitable access to health and education- global cooperation, and the Copenhagen Declaration of 1995 part of it suggested for the adoption of a “social policy agenda” including “full employment scheme, social integration, equitable access to education and health”3 among other things. Similarly, certain theories have also been offered as a means of getting out of poverty, among them were: “the modernization theory” which is based on westernization and industrialization approaches, the socialist model and most recently the “bottom top/ sustainable development theory”. The outlined models are tagged with essential indicators that signifies improvement or otherwise. Though they have their shortcomings, countries that have adopted them backed with determined minds have recorded great improvements anyway. In light of these, the stands of Sierra Leone in meeting the regional and global treaties signed to ending poverty on a stipulated time is explicitly uncertain considering our approaches, our efforts and our willingness to do so. 2015 was agreed upon in meeting the set MDGs. What is the reality of our poverty profile? How many people do afford their basic meals a day? How has our education system been so far? How have we address HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases? How far have we collaborated with marginalized people especially women on the development process? Why are our women losing their lives on the process of giving birth? Why do we still record high percentage of infants’ deaths? And what is the status of our international relations? The responses to these questions are part of the indicators that are used to rate countries, and to many of these we have performed poorly despite the huge amount of money spent for the realization of all these. We acknowledged government efforts in mitigating the incidence of poverty and the support of development partners to complement these efforts. It has most times been appalling when we try to equate the input of government and development partners to the true picture of our development stands. For instance in 42011 alone, government spending on poverty reduction summed up to 514.3 billion Leones whilst we 5still records nearly 55 percent of people living in poverty compared to other African countries. Our educated population percentage continues to stagnate around 25-30 percent, low enrollment and non completion is on the increase. Wherein many communities strand of school structures, the case of Magbainba Nguahun Chiefdom Bombali district, it has a total of twelve schools within the chiefdom but only seven of them have permanent structures and the remaining five structures as shown in fig.1 (the Mabiama community), some more worse than this, government said to have established 6000 primary schools as of 2010 and 2011. Our life expectancy 648 years is far below Cape Verde’s 74 years and Ghana’s 65 years. The health sector was expected to make great difference with the Free Health Care initiative (FHC), but our women and under five children are still exposed to the incidence of early deaths. Poverty is an endemic that is easy to break. This is why in one of my early articles I mention the possibility of realizing what the western countries enjoyed today depending on our exploration and valuable use of the opportunities we have at our disposal. Our chances of outweighing poverty are great. History has proven that the experiences of developed countries yesterday during their transformation phases are far more deplorable than what we face today. Think of the modernized medication facility, the technological innovations, sanitized water sources available, the transportation and communication means, the human resource the list goes on, we have all of these at our disposal to enhance our strives and bring about changes. We have little or no way been able to use these facilities as advantages, we still depend on international funding for a greater percentage of our development programmes. We have little consideration of the rural poor and marginalize other sectors of society creating more impossibility of realizing development. In other to become what Prof. Mohamed Yunus proposed “building a museum for the disposal of poverty horrors” and to have a day of commemorating global poverty, the effort and determination of all and sundry is highly required. We need to broaden “social consciousness” in our gatherings, on radios, TVs and down to rural communities. Seriousness should also be given to the social policy agenda by; expanding the education and health sector making them equitably accessible, affordable and sustainable, addressing unemployment among youths especially university graduates, empowering the middle class and capacitate those institutions that cater for them, discourage lawlessness and corruption among private and public sector officials, collaborate with the private sector on the development process, address the issue of social safety and social security, last but not the least capacitate MDAs of government with the necessary resources to ensure their proper functioning.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 20:36:59 +0000
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