Bottom Up

Water is life, make it cheap to access

Previously, we, under the wise and dynamic leadership of  our indefatigable boss, Prof Dr Joyce Befu, MEGA-1,  have talked at length about the many absurd policies and laws that Malawi has, many of which aim at impoverishing the average citizen. 

On paper, every new government comes in to improve the lot of its citizens by making good services available to all citizens and to undo the bad policies of the past regimes.

Read all political party manifestos and you would think the drafters of the manifestos went to the same school at the same time and were taught by the same teachers of the same qualifications.

The promises are the same.   We will make electricity available in all corners of the country at reasonable prices, so shout the manifestos.  This will save the country from further deforestation, blah blah blah.

We will make potable water available to all and accessible by all.  This will make our people live happily and healthily and ensure they fully participate in the development of the country while enjoying their human rights.

Most of the water we drink in Malawi comes from Lake Malawi, the Ruo, the Lweya and Bua rivers. Lake Malombe is an extension of Lake Malawi. Yes, the Shire River is a drainpipe for Lake Malawi.  For centuries, communities have settled along and subsisted on Lake Malawi, the Shire River and others.  Yes, they got ill once or twice, but they survived.

Today, the same water is pumped upland and piped down to people’s homes, even along the very lake where the water is pumped from.  Admitted, chlorine is added to reduce the number of bad microbes.  Admitted, the water is filtered to remove the dirt, corpses, and human and animal excreta. That is all. The water we drink and use to wash our bodies is from Lake Malawi and other rivers.

However, as Lucius Banda, the self-styled soldier of us, the Fleet Street Ghetto anthuwamba, once sang, water in Malawi is so expensive that one would think it is imported from heaven.  Water is expensive in Malawi. Very expensive. 

It is expensive because politicians want it to be expensive.  When politicians don’t water to be expensive, they make it cheap, even free, no matter the circumstances of their countries

Muamar Ghaddafi, the Libya’s brother leader, murdered by the West, had to pipe it from a fresh water lake buried under the Sahara desert to Tripoli where, despite the expenses involved, Libyans enjoyed and still enjoy free ‘litres of life’. 

But not in Malawi where politicians don’t care about the cost of the ‘litres of life’.  On paper water is life, but in reality water is a political tool.  The urbanite must pay heavily.

Next time you receive your water bill, check the votes: Meter reading charge: K800; Meter Rental charge: K1000. What this means is that whether you use the water or not, you will still pay a minimum of K1800 (2.5 US dollars). K1800 must be paid even when the water board does not provide the water. Such as is the capitalist mentality driving the water industry.

You must pay K1 000 for guarding the meter. If it gets lost (usually uprooted by the very people who install the meters), you are charged K120 000.00 (125 US Dollars) or you won’t get a reconnection. 

After being ‘robbed’ the K1 800, you are charged for the actual, sometimes fake, water you used.

Then you are charged Value Added Tax at 16.5% on the total of the extorted K1800 and the cost of the water used.

The government knows the only taxes that cannot be avoided are those on services that matter most to life. One of them is water. But water is life; please Messrs Government, make it accessible cheaply.

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button