Close Cham and Health Science Colleges
Dear Judge Mbadwa,
We, students and graduates of Christian Health Association of Malawi (Cham) colleges and the Malawi College of Health Sciences, and on behalf of prospective students of these colleges, we write to seek the intervention of the court on the future of the institutions and the cherished career path we undertook to follow.
We don’t know the procedures that are followed when one wants to deregister properly instituted training institutions in the country; hence, we are asking for your direction on how to go about it.
Lord judge Mbadwa, you might have heard that government is no longer interested in hiring health workers despite the vacancy rate in government health facilities being unpleasantly huge with the patient-nurse or patient-doctor ratio being far beyond the World Health Organisation recommended one.
Honourable judge, you know that since the Institute for Monitoring Funding (IMF) started calling the shots, everything has gone haywire in the country. Your Lordship, the establishment can do anything to please the IMF even if it means starving its people, denying its sick patients of the needed care or abandoning essential services that keep the country going.
Why do we want the health training institutions deregistered or closed altogether? Your Lordship, you have heard that the priority of government now is community colleges as the establishment wants community colleges to be everywhere. So, what would be the wisdom of knowing anatomy and physiology or tropical diseases when all the government wants is that we should be selling pigeon peas? If they really want us to think entrepreneurship why can’t they engage Teveta to take over Cham and government health institutions if they cannot make them community colleges?
Your Lordship, the scholarship money government has been giving us would better be turned into start-up capital for the so-called businesses because it would not make sense to continue training people you cannot hire as directed by IMF.
Since it appears government is ready to at all cost be in good books with the IMF, we want to help it to maintain a cordial relationship with this organisation at our expense and independence. It is for this reason that we ask for your direction on how to close health colleges or turn them into community colleges altogether.
By the way, can we also apply for the closure of College of Medicine on behalf of the students there?
Looking forward to your response.
The undersigned graduates and students. n
Dear Emmanuel,
While appreciating the spirit of your article the issue is not the IMF but the Malawi Govt’s inability or unwillingness to hold those responsible for #Cashgate (all varieties) accountable and to convince International Donors that it cannot reoccur. As a result direct support of the National Budget has been lost. As you are aware many of your fellow students have been supported by organizations such as CDC and USAID while the Norwegian Govt. has invested significantly in training infrastructure so the need for more health workers is widely recognized and supported.
Now is not the time to follow McFail’s advice and take up market trading but to continue to raise this issue and press for a leadership that the Malawian people like you and your fellow students and graduates deserve.