SOMALIA: Free education “too expensive” for Somaliland

Photo: Casey Johnson/IRIN

Somali girls outside their school. Somaliland has introduced free education in primary and intermediate schools

HARGEISA, 25 January 2011 (IRIN) – The self-declared republic of Somaliland has introduced free education at primary and intermediate levels and doubled teachers’ salaries but these decisions will be hard to sustain and could affect the quality of public education, say experts.

“We need to ask ourselves, does the Somaliland government have the capacity to handle this [salary] increase? The short answer is ‘no’,” Saeed Osman, a Uganda-based researcher in Somaliland’s education development, told IRIN.

“The Ministry of Education requested the Finance Ministry to recruit 2,000 teachers but the response was that only 1,500 teachers could be recruited,” he added. “This shows that Somaliland’s government lacks the capacity to handle the increased school enrollment.”

Somaliland’s Finance Minister Mohamed Hashi Elmi announced on 16 January the introduction of free education in primary and intermediate schools. He also increased, by 100 percent, salaries of civil servants, teachers and personnel in the national forces.

“We have employed about 1,500 new teachers; for this reason all public primary and intermediate schools will be free of charge,” Elmi said.

However, education experts say the government’s move could damage the quality of public education in Somaliland.

“Look at the countries in the region, such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. When they announced universal primary education, school enrollment increased by about 200 percent,” Osman said. “A similar increase will happen in Somaliland, can we handle this?

“The salary increase announced by the government will not amount to much because a teacher used to earn about US$100-$180 with the parents’ support fee included; without the parents’ support, a teacher earned $50, so with the new increase, this will come to just $100; this is not adequate if the parents’ support fee is withdrawn [as will happen under the free education system].”

At least 200,000 students are enrolled in Somaliland’s public primary and intermediate schools, according to estimates by the Ministry of Education.

Ali Mohamed Ali, the director-general for education in Somaliland, said: “Only 21,639 students in public primary/intermediate schools are currently benefiting from free education; we hope that the newly employed 1,500 teachers will bridge the gap. Somaliland’s school enrollment increase is 6 percent annually, we do not anticipate a sharp increase from this.”

Before the election in June 2010 of President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud, Somaliland’s annual education budget was 14.6 billion shillings ($2.3 million) out of a $45 million annual budget. However, sources in the Finance Ministry told IRIN this year’s education budget was about 35 billion shillings ($5 million) out of the government’s $90 million annual budget.

“About 90 percent of the increased budget is expected to come from the Inland Revenue,” a source in the ministry, who requested anonymity, said.

The increased budget has yet to be passed by Somaliland’s Council of Ministers and House of Representatives.

Welcome move

Somaliland has been largely stable since 1991 when it dissolved the union with Somalia and public schools were free until 1994 when civil war broke out with the former Somali National Movement – the liberation movement of Somaliland – between 1981 and 1991. This caused economic hardships for the government, leading to students being charged 15,000 Somaliland shillings ($2.50) each per month since 1995.

The increase will boost teachers’ livelihoods and encourage them not to seek other jobs

Thousands of children are expected to take advantage of the free primary education. “The programme will give a chance to poor families to send their children to schools even though the yearly school enrollment in public schools was about 6 percent of the total number of students,” Ali, the director-general of education, said.

Sa’ed Ahmed Khayre, a teacher in Ahmed Dhagah Primary and Intermediate School in Hargeisa, said: “Public school principals used to earn much more than the teachers and we believe that the new salary increase will give us the chance to evaluate the teachers who are doing their jobs well or not.

“The increase will boost teachers’ livelihoods and encourage them not to seek other jobs; it will improve the quality of public school education because earlier we used to care more for quantity rather than quality.”

Parents and students have welcomed the government’s announcement.

“Three of my seven children are in the public schools; I used to worry about their school fees daily because if I don’t pay on time, my children get thrown out of school,” Nimo Ahmed Nuh, a petty trader in Hargeisa, said. “This [free education] was one of the promises made by KULMIYE [ruling party] during its campaigns last year.”

Mawlid Mohamed, 16, a student at Sheikh Madar Primary/Intermediate school in Hargeisa, said: “We used to be chased home if our parents didn’t pay the school fees on the 25th of every month; now we are glad this will come to an end.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org

ZAMBIA: Poverty fuels secession bid by Western Province

Photo: Nebert Mulenga/IRIN

President Rupiah Banda (left) walks with the Lozi king, Lubosi Imwiko II, at the Kuomboka ceremony that marks the annual flooding of the Zambezi river

LUSAKA, 25 January 2011 (IRIN) – High poverty levels and the skewed distribution of resources in Zambia’s poorest province is stirring secession talk – with an ethnic dimension.

“The tensions in Western Province are a consequence of the neglect that the place has suffered in terms of socio-economic and infrastructure development,” Thomas Mabwe, head of Development Studies at the Zambia Open University, told IRIN.

“Poverty levels in Western Province are the highest in the country, and there is very little to show in terms of infrastructure development. So, to some extent, people are just reacting to that under-development of their region,” he said.

Earlier this month Mungu, the capital of Western Province, saw protests demanding independence for the region: Violent clashes with security forces left three dead, including a nine-year-old child, and 12 others were hospitalized.

The protests started with a poster and flier campaign by a group calling themselves the Black Bulls, which urged all of the province’s “non-inhabitants” (non-Lozi) to leave the province by 15 January 2011, or risk being hacked to death.

Western Province is home to the Lozi-speaking people, one of the biggest of Zambia’s 73 ethnic groups. The minority Nkoyas and Mbunda ethnic groups in the province were classed as “non-inhabitants” in the poster campaign.

Police have arrested 24 Lozi-speaking people and charged them with treason, an offence that carries the death penalty.

Colonial treaty

Western Province was a British Protectorate known as Barotseland [Land of the Lozi people] while the remainder of Zambia, then known as Northern Rhodesia, was administered as a British colony.

Ahead of independence (1964) and to facilitate a unitary state, the two territories were united by a pact known as the Barotse Agreement, which among other things, called for equal distribution of resources.

There is nothing independent about us [the Lozis]; we are not free. We will continue [with protests] because what we want is our nation [Barotseland]

“The Government of the Republic of Zambia shall have the same general responsibility for providing financial support for the administration and economic development of Barotseland as it has for other parts of the Republic and shall ensure that, in discharge of this responsibility, Barotseland is treated fairly and equitably in relation to other parts of the Republic,” said the 1964 Barotse Agreement signed by Zambia’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda; Northern Rhodesia’s last governor, Evelyn Hone; and the then Lozi king Mwanawina Lewanika.

In October 2010, the government removed the Barotse Agreement from the new draft constitution, which immediately led to widespread protests in the province.

Grace Muyangana, leader of the Barotse Freedom Movement which is calling for the province’s independence, led a campaign to pull down the national flag from public institutions and boycott the 24 October Independence Day celebrations.

“There is nothing independent about us [the Lozis]; we are not free. We will continue [with protests] because what we want is our nation [Barotseland],” she told local media at the time.

Western Province social indicators show poverty levels at 84 percent, against the national average of 64 percent, an indicator that has remained unchanged in six national surveys conducted by the government’s Central Statistical Office since 1991, the year multi-party politics was re-introduced in Zambia.

While 19 percent of Zambian households have access to electricity, only 3.5 percent of families in Western Province have it, and 53.4 percent of the province’s households have no toilets.

The province has no industry to speak of and the South African chain store, Shoprite Checkers, represents the only foreign investment in the region, with fishing being the predominant economic activity for the 700,000 inhabitants.

Paul Duffy, a Roman Catholic Church missionary in the province for 25 years, told IRIN: “People keep hearing promises from government leaders, especially during election campaigns and they vote for them [government leaders] expecting those developmental programmes to be implemented. The people are still waiting for action.”

“The solution to this problem [in Western Province] is for the government to pay attention to the particular issues of development in the province,” said Mabwe of the Zambia Open University.

Lee Habasonda, executive director of the regional governance watchdog, the Southern African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD), warned government against down-playing the issue and called for dialogue.

“The approach taken by those calling for the Barotseland restoration [secession] and the government has a distabilizing effect on Zambia as a unitary state. The protesters should not call for secession or chase away non-Lozi speaking people because they are endangering other Lozi people who are outside Western Province.”

“This can undermine national security. Government should call for dialogue and hear the issues that the people have or else we may end up with a state of emergency which is never good in a democratic country,” Habasonda told IRIN.

Elections

National elections are scheduled for this year and analysts fear if the Western Province issue remains unresolved it could become a flashpoint for election violence.

Stanley Mhango, president of Foundation Democratic Process, an elections and good governance watchdog, commented: “This can greatly compromise our 2011 general elections because it has the capacity to create anarchy in the country; people should be aware that it is easy to lose peace and stability but very difficult to restore it.”

President Rupiah Banda pipped presidential challenger and leader of the Patriotic Front (PF) Michael Sata to the post by a 2 percent margin, after a presidential snap-election was called in the wake of President Levy Mwanawasa’s death (August 2008), although Sata garnered virtually no votes in Western Province.

Sata has backed calls for the recognition of the Barotse Agreement and its re-inclusion into the national constitution.

“The Barotse Agreement is still a valid agreement. How can you ignore an agreement that was signed, sealed and delivered almost 47 years ago? There is no honest person who can deny the existence and validity of the Barotse Agreement. I am ready to spend two months in Barotseland to help fight for their rights,” he told local media in the aftermath of the protests in Western Province.

“The PF government will honour the Barotse Agreement without hesitation because we have no problems with it. We see nothing wrong with it,” Sata, who opposed recognition of the same agreement when a cabinet minister in Chiluba’s government, said.

Banda has dismissed claims of lopsided development in Western Province, but conceded that the region may have been neglected.

“Yes, we haven’t done everything. It’s impossible to do everything at one time. That would be like magic. We have started on the path to the development of our country. Our country was in [a] shambles for a long time. Our party has begun to attend to these problems,” Banda told a public meeting on 15 January in Luapula, northern Zambia.

“We are rebuilding the hospitals in our country, including in Western Province. We can’t build all of them at one time. I wish I was a magician because then I would strike once and all the hospitals would germinate; [but] we can’t do that.”

Banda said the situation had been brought firmly under control and his administration would “ensure that precious province known as Western Province remains part and parcel of our country”.

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source http://www.irinnews.org

DISASTERS: Better understanding of disaster impact on lives needed

Photo: Ingmar Zahorsky/Flickr

Floods caused havoc in most instances in Asia

JOHANNESBURG, 25 January 2011 (IRIN) – In 2010, five of the most devastating disasters, measured in loss of lives, goods and infrastructure, occurred in Asia. Investing in disaster planning could go a long way to keeping the number of casualties down, experts said.

“Disasters in Asia are largely due to floods and, in the second instance, storms. I think there is an awareness building up for flood management, as agricultural crops are frequently destroyed, as well as infrastructure, but not enough,” said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Belgium-based Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Poor evidence of the impact of a natural disaster on human lives and livelihoods at micro-level on was a major reason why governments were not proactive about disaster risk reduction, said Guha-Sapir. For instance, there was a lack of understanding of the short-term and long-term impacts of a flood on a village.

A recent study by CRED in Orissa, a flood-prone province in India, showed that children in flood-affected villages suffered significantly higher levels of chronic malnutrition compared to similar equally poor children in villages that had escaped flooding.

The international aid community, with their focus on the short-term response to disasters, was partly to blame, Guha-Sapir said.

She suggested that in instances where countries were unable to strengthen the response at a local level, international and national aid agencies should try to empower communities to better cope with disaster.

“It’s critical for local governments, city leaders and their partners to incorporate climate change adaptation in urban planning,” Margareta Wahlström, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Reduction, said in a statement.

“What we call ‘disaster risk reduction’ – and what some are calling ‘risk mitigation’ or ‘risk management’ – is a strategic and technical tool for helping national and local governments to fulfil their responsibilities to citizens.” It was “no longer optional”, she noted.

Earthquakes, floods, a heat-wave and cold-wave were among the 373 natural disasters recorded in 2010. Together, they killed over 296,800 people, affected nearly 208 million others, and cost almost US$110 billion, said CRED.

Natural hazards in China and Pakistan accounted for more than US$27 billion worth of damage and nearly 8,500 fatalities.

Earthquakes in China killed 2,968 people in April 2010, and 1,691 people died in floods between May and August. A further 1,765 were killed by mudslides, landslides or rock falls, triggered by heavy rains and flooding in August.

In Pakistan nearly 2,000 people died in floodwater that covered one-fifth of the land after torrential rains pelted the northwest, swelling the Indus and its tributaries from July to August in 2010.

An earthquake in Haiti killed over 222,500 people in January, and a heat wave in the Russian summer caused around 56,000 fatalities, making 2010 the deadliest year in at least two decades.

CRED also highlighted the anomalies in measuring losses because of the enormous economic differences.

“Haiti, which led the list with by far the highest numbers of deaths, fell to the fourth place in the rank of the economic damage list,” said Guha-Sapir. Chile, which was hit by an earthquake in February 2010 and had the seventh highest number of fatalities, climbed to the top of the list of countries suffering financial losses.

“This is a good example of the inadequacy of how we measure losses, as human lives are not included in this measure. Also, as property values in Chile are much higher than in Haiti and insurance penetration is higher, the losses are also higher.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org