Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Biogas project in Malawi leads to other benefits
A small-scale underground biogas plant in Malawi that has recently been established in an effort to mitigate climate change can also improve food security and livelihoods in rural Malawi, if well tapped. Mizeck Chagunda, geneticist and expert in livestock, agriculture and environment, explains.
Malawi: Government to track internet users
Malawi government is to, through its communication wing, the Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (Macra) soon start monitoring the operations of internet facilities where most people get unlawful materials to face the law. This is to avoid the spread of pornographic videos and pictures on the internet.
According to the state controlled Malawi News Agency (Mana) member of Parliamentary Committee on Media and Communications, Jonas Viyazgi last week took Macra to task to explain what the authority is doing to avoid increasing publications of unlawful materials including pornographic videos and pictures on the internet.
“There is always increasing publication of pornographic materials in the country which is posing a threat to future generation,” said Viyazgi adding,
“Therefore to protect it there is a need for Macra to control such publications.”
In response, Macra’s acting director general, Michael Kuntiya assured the committee that his authority is seriously working to its best to control such materials.
“We have already involved the police in monitoring places where the malpractices are taking place,” said Kuntiya.
Last year, a senior executive at Malawi’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), shook the Malawian society after naked images he had posed alongside three women landed on an online Malawian newspaper including in the street for sale by vendors.
Some weeks later, a naked image of Malawian female reporter with state controlled broadcaster Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) also found its way on the same Malawian online newspaper.
The two developments angered then Information and Civic Education minister (now Gender, child and Community Development) Patricia Kaliati who called on the police to track the culprits saying it was not only against Malawian culture but also a crime.
In both cases however, the suspects involved were arrested but none was successfully tried and convicted.
According to the state controlled Malawi News Agency (Mana) member of Parliamentary Committee on Media and Communications, Jonas Viyazgi last week took Macra to task to explain what the authority is doing to avoid increasing publications of unlawful materials including pornographic videos and pictures on the internet.
“There is always increasing publication of pornographic materials in the country which is posing a threat to future generation,” said Viyazgi adding,
“Therefore to protect it there is a need for Macra to control such publications.”
In response, Macra’s acting director general, Michael Kuntiya assured the committee that his authority is seriously working to its best to control such materials.
“We have already involved the police in monitoring places where the malpractices are taking place,” said Kuntiya.
Last year, a senior executive at Malawi’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), shook the Malawian society after naked images he had posed alongside three women landed on an online Malawian newspaper including in the street for sale by vendors.
Some weeks later, a naked image of Malawian female reporter with state controlled broadcaster Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) also found its way on the same Malawian online newspaper.
The two developments angered then Information and Civic Education minister (now Gender, child and Community Development) Patricia Kaliati who called on the police to track the culprits saying it was not only against Malawian culture but also a crime.
In both cases however, the suspects involved were arrested but none was successfully tried and convicted.
Malawi's children pay dearly for the world's cheap tobacco
Tens of thousands are just ''collateral damage'' to multinational companies.
THE tobacco industry in Myrtleford died in late 2006 when British American Tobacco and Philip Morris decided they could buy tobacco leaves cheaper elsewhere. Indeed they could, with about 85 per cent of global production now coming from developing countries such as China, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Malawi. What they didn't reveal is the human cost of this low-priced leaf.
Seventy-eight thousand children are employed in the tobacco farms of Malawi in conditions barely better than slavery, daily enduring gross violations of their rights. They are paid just two cents an hour, working up to 12 hours a day. The work is unrelenting and pay is often docked for the cost of any food the employer might provide. The children are routinely abused, both physically and emotionally, to make them work harder and longer. Girls in particular are subjected to sexual abuse, often coerced by threats of withholding food, pay or employment.
The children also work without proper protective clothing or equipment. As a consequence, many suffer from the symptoms of what is known as green tobacco sickness, essentially nicotine poisoning. Their handling of the green tobacco leaves is equivalent to a "50-a-day" habit. Consequently these youngsters experience severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.
Economists often use words such as "externality" that hide the true meaning of things. This is where there is an impact - positive or negative - on a party that is not directly involved in an economic transaction. For the tobacco companies, the harmful impact of child labour on tobacco farms is, conveniently, a negative externality. Think of it as the economic equivalent of collateral damage.
Tobacco multinationals have form when it comes to externalities. They have consistently treated the adverse cost of smoking as an externality that is not their responsibility. Only aggressive regulation and legal action in the developed countries of the world has managed to rein them in.
Tobacco companies will argue that in a capitalist system it is their responsibility to purchase raw material cheaply to increase shareholder returns. They say that when they buy tobacco leaf in the markets of Malawi they are simply buying at the market price; that they are not responsible for how the tobacco is produced or who is involved in its production.
This view of economics and the limits to corporate responsibility is untenable in the 21st century. More responsible multinationals have already realised they must take responsibility for their global supply chains, which is why we can buy Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee (even in fast-food restaurants) and sweatshop-free sports shoes.
Tobacco companies try to suggest that it is up to the Government of Malawi to enforce child labour laws. This view conveniently ignores a massive power imbalance.
Children do not work in the tobacco farms because they prefer it to school. They work because it is a marginally better option than starvation. Malawi maintains a rock-bottom-priced tobacco production industry because it has precious little else to sell besides tobacco leaf, which makes up 70 per cent of its export revenue. Neither the children of Malawi nor the country are in any position to bargain. Poverty and vulnerability drive this situation at both the household and the national level.
Yes, Malawi should act to ensure that children are paid decent wages, treated with respect and given access to education and medical care. But the free-market response of multinational tobacco companies would no doubt be to stop buying tobacco in Malawi, finding somewhere cheaper.
This is effectively a race to the bottom in which the multinational companies hold all the cards - a painful experience of powerlessness that the people of Myrtleford know about.
The only way this can be stopped is for multinational companies to self-regulate their supply chains or for some form of global regulation to be enforced. But for now the free market seems completely free to impose nasty externalities on children without conscience or responsibility. No thought is given to the duties the companies have to these children.
It has become painfully clear that the damaging externality of carbon pollution must be internalised in our market system. It should be equally clear that global capitalism and the wonders of free trade need greater civilising limits if impoverished children are to be kept from becoming collateral damage.
THE tobacco industry in Myrtleford died in late 2006 when British American Tobacco and Philip Morris decided they could buy tobacco leaves cheaper elsewhere. Indeed they could, with about 85 per cent of global production now coming from developing countries such as China, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Malawi. What they didn't reveal is the human cost of this low-priced leaf.
Seventy-eight thousand children are employed in the tobacco farms of Malawi in conditions barely better than slavery, daily enduring gross violations of their rights. They are paid just two cents an hour, working up to 12 hours a day. The work is unrelenting and pay is often docked for the cost of any food the employer might provide. The children are routinely abused, both physically and emotionally, to make them work harder and longer. Girls in particular are subjected to sexual abuse, often coerced by threats of withholding food, pay or employment.
The children also work without proper protective clothing or equipment. As a consequence, many suffer from the symptoms of what is known as green tobacco sickness, essentially nicotine poisoning. Their handling of the green tobacco leaves is equivalent to a "50-a-day" habit. Consequently these youngsters experience severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.
Economists often use words such as "externality" that hide the true meaning of things. This is where there is an impact - positive or negative - on a party that is not directly involved in an economic transaction. For the tobacco companies, the harmful impact of child labour on tobacco farms is, conveniently, a negative externality. Think of it as the economic equivalent of collateral damage.
Tobacco multinationals have form when it comes to externalities. They have consistently treated the adverse cost of smoking as an externality that is not their responsibility. Only aggressive regulation and legal action in the developed countries of the world has managed to rein them in.
Tobacco companies will argue that in a capitalist system it is their responsibility to purchase raw material cheaply to increase shareholder returns. They say that when they buy tobacco leaf in the markets of Malawi they are simply buying at the market price; that they are not responsible for how the tobacco is produced or who is involved in its production.
This view of economics and the limits to corporate responsibility is untenable in the 21st century. More responsible multinationals have already realised they must take responsibility for their global supply chains, which is why we can buy Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee (even in fast-food restaurants) and sweatshop-free sports shoes.
Tobacco companies try to suggest that it is up to the Government of Malawi to enforce child labour laws. This view conveniently ignores a massive power imbalance.
Children do not work in the tobacco farms because they prefer it to school. They work because it is a marginally better option than starvation. Malawi maintains a rock-bottom-priced tobacco production industry because it has precious little else to sell besides tobacco leaf, which makes up 70 per cent of its export revenue. Neither the children of Malawi nor the country are in any position to bargain. Poverty and vulnerability drive this situation at both the household and the national level.
Yes, Malawi should act to ensure that children are paid decent wages, treated with respect and given access to education and medical care. But the free-market response of multinational tobacco companies would no doubt be to stop buying tobacco in Malawi, finding somewhere cheaper.
This is effectively a race to the bottom in which the multinational companies hold all the cards - a painful experience of powerlessness that the people of Myrtleford know about.
The only way this can be stopped is for multinational companies to self-regulate their supply chains or for some form of global regulation to be enforced. But for now the free market seems completely free to impose nasty externalities on children without conscience or responsibility. No thought is given to the duties the companies have to these children.
It has become painfully clear that the damaging externality of carbon pollution must be internalised in our market system. It should be equally clear that global capitalism and the wonders of free trade need greater civilising limits if impoverished children are to be kept from becoming collateral damage.
Malawi / Police Harasses Journalists
LILONGWE, Malawi, September 1, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Armed police officers harassed two Senior Journalists Wisdom Chimgwede and Clifton Kawanga, from the Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL) for taking pictures of City Council workers torching vendors’ stalls. According to Chimgwede who is chief reporter for The Daily Times, the armed officers banged the vehicle the journalists were using and demanded the camera from them.
The council workers were on duty from around 9pm burning and dismantling unlicensed vending stalls around Blantyre Flea Market. The police were under orders to remove vendors from the streets and relocate them to designated areas of trade such as licensed Flea Market areas. The vendors, however, claim that the designated places of trade are too small to accommodate all the traders in the City.
“When we heard the news, we rushed to the scene to do our job,” said Kawanga, Daily Times Features Editor.
“The police apparently wanted us to inform them that we were taking pictures. I don’t know if that would have been a news picture,” reasoned Chimgwede who is also a MISA-Malawi’s National Governing Council (NGC) member. The journalists later obliged to open the doors of the vehicle and a Police Officer identified only as Mollen, grabbed the camera to delete the pictures. The officers managed to remove the camera’s memory card which was only handed back a day later through Southern Region Police Headquarters.
The Police have on several occasions stopped journalists from taking pictures especially during presidential functions. They are only allowed to do so from a distance and not closer to the president.
MISA-Malawi National Director Aubrey Chikungwa condemned the police action and described the officers’ behavior as barbaric. “The journalists were only doing their job. The City Assembly workers were carrying out an operation and the journalists had the right to take pictures at the scene. The action taken by the police was uncalled for and it’s high time the men and women in uniform learnt to respect people’s right to information,” said Chikungwa.
SOURCE
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
The council workers were on duty from around 9pm burning and dismantling unlicensed vending stalls around Blantyre Flea Market. The police were under orders to remove vendors from the streets and relocate them to designated areas of trade such as licensed Flea Market areas. The vendors, however, claim that the designated places of trade are too small to accommodate all the traders in the City.
“When we heard the news, we rushed to the scene to do our job,” said Kawanga, Daily Times Features Editor.
“The police apparently wanted us to inform them that we were taking pictures. I don’t know if that would have been a news picture,” reasoned Chimgwede who is also a MISA-Malawi’s National Governing Council (NGC) member. The journalists later obliged to open the doors of the vehicle and a Police Officer identified only as Mollen, grabbed the camera to delete the pictures. The officers managed to remove the camera’s memory card which was only handed back a day later through Southern Region Police Headquarters.
The Police have on several occasions stopped journalists from taking pictures especially during presidential functions. They are only allowed to do so from a distance and not closer to the president.
MISA-Malawi National Director Aubrey Chikungwa condemned the police action and described the officers’ behavior as barbaric. “The journalists were only doing their job. The City Assembly workers were carrying out an operation and the journalists had the right to take pictures at the scene. The action taken by the police was uncalled for and it’s high time the men and women in uniform learnt to respect people’s right to information,” said Chikungwa.
SOURCE
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
Private Radio Demands Parliament Speaker To Disclose MPs Assets
Zodiak Radio Station (ZBS), is demanding that National Assembly Speaker Henry Chimunthu Banda disclose details of Members of Parliament who have declared their assets as per constitutional requirement. The radio station became the first media house to present this challenge.
“We believe the public has the right to know who has declared and who has not and afterwards we will announce the names on radio. We believe the law did not intend for the Speaker to hide them,” says ZBS managing director Gospel Kazako in the letter.
Chimunthu Banda however, told the Nation Newspaper that he had to read the letter from ZBS and examine the arguments before committing himself to whether he will release the details or not. The Speaker gave Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament up to 19 August 2009 to declare their assets as per constitutional requirement and said the figures of those that have declared will be known in due course.
“I will have to see what their arguments are. The law states that the parliamentarians should declare their assets and ordinarily the Speaker would keep them. This is not the first time people have declared their assets so we are yet to see what ZBS are saying,” said Chimunthu Banda.
The Speaker further said his office and that of the Clerk of Parliament was still compiling the details of those that had declared their assets and said they might just announce the number of people who have declared as opposed to giving details to the public. Meanwhile, experts have observed that the assets declaration provision is useless as it does not spell out any penalties for public officials who fail to comply. A draft bill to address this problem has been lying idle for the past four years.
“We believe the public has the right to know who has declared and who has not and afterwards we will announce the names on radio. We believe the law did not intend for the Speaker to hide them,” says ZBS managing director Gospel Kazako in the letter.
Chimunthu Banda however, told the Nation Newspaper that he had to read the letter from ZBS and examine the arguments before committing himself to whether he will release the details or not. The Speaker gave Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament up to 19 August 2009 to declare their assets as per constitutional requirement and said the figures of those that have declared will be known in due course.
“I will have to see what their arguments are. The law states that the parliamentarians should declare their assets and ordinarily the Speaker would keep them. This is not the first time people have declared their assets so we are yet to see what ZBS are saying,” said Chimunthu Banda.
The Speaker further said his office and that of the Clerk of Parliament was still compiling the details of those that had declared their assets and said they might just announce the number of people who have declared as opposed to giving details to the public. Meanwhile, experts have observed that the assets declaration provision is useless as it does not spell out any penalties for public officials who fail to comply. A draft bill to address this problem has been lying idle for the past four years.
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