2017 national Budget expectations

By Augustine Phiri

THE much awaited 2017 national budget is out of Government strong rooms into the public domain for every voter and non-voter to see, scrutinise and critique. Finance Minister Mr Felix Mutati, who is already coined as “Mr Pillars”, presented the annual national budget worth K64.5 billion to the National Assembly last Friday (November 11). The financial document which outlines incomes and expenditures for Government in the financial year of 2017 is based on the five pillars of Agriculture, Health, Education, Tourism and Manufacturing. Look, I keep my daily, weekly, monthly and annual budget lopsided with incomes outstripping expenditures by far. This is done just in case there is no income flaws at the time I need to spend, then I can fall on the excess income saved from the previous budget. But this national budget is different – incomes are reflecting K64.5 Billion exactly the same as that of expenditures in the name of a balanced budget. You see, to me this financial model is dangerous because it does not leave any ngwee to save for future use just in case. Now, where shall the Government find the money to folk out a drunken person from a disused pit latrine he stumbled into at night on his way home? This is exactly what I am trying to put across. My ideal kind of budget should reflect more income. In fact, triple the amount of expenditure. And so, in order to reduce on expenditure, refer to the following concept notes. Without much ado, we should start taxing churches, synagogues, mosques, and anything else that calls itself the house of worship or prayer. Seriously, these people running churches make a lot of bucks and have been in this rosy situation for a long time with some of them owning the best real estate. They are never shy about telling the church goers to “sow the seed” and have different types of offerings in a single church service. If they were not making money, how do some of the churches, I understand, even have swiping machines where the devotees use their Automated Teller Machines (ATM) cards to make offerings? Don’t these collections constitute incomes for church organisations and worth taxing? Taxing churches would also save as a measure for curbing the mushrooming of new churches when there is only one God for all of us in this Christian Nation. It is a complete waste of public funds for Government to spend money on programmes such as circumcision activities when there are Non-Governmental Organisations heavily involved in the same. Charitable organisations are far much better at public begging for such schemes than Government could ever be. Hence, Government would do well to stop spending money on anything that charitable organisations are also doing in order to lessen expenses. Government should stop funding any form of health care. If you can get sick on your own, you can also get better on your own and why should other people care for your illness they did not give you? In addition, no matter how many hospital and health posts you build and fill with modern equipment and drugs, the sick still crawl to the ng’angas and sangomas for treatment. They have more faith in ng’angas who even tell you that your own uncle or auntie is responsible for your illness before being cured. Hospitals do not do this; they simply pierce a needle into your backside by a female nurse who is not supposed to see your underwear riddled with holes in it. We are now used to load shedding and I see no need to spend colossal sums of money building new power generation plants. Have you noticed how silent our townships have been lately; there is sanity and this thing about ‘zimya neighbour’ with noisy music centres is no more. Provision of clean drinking water is another in which the government should not waste money on. If you cannot access clean water to drink, find something else to drink like chibwantu, tobwa or munkoyo and your thirst would be quenched just as water could do. In any case, it is easy to clean dirty water for drinking; simply boil the water and leave it under the bed for a while to cool and then drink the upper layer of it, do-it-yourself sort, period. So, with this simple water purification technology, why drag the Government into providing clean drinking water for you? Libraries are among the worst public money wasters the Government should stop funding to save money. You see, nobody needs books anymore. We all watch television, videos, facebook, twitter and the internet in general. Today’s children are functionary illiterates and visiting a library for them is a nuisance and time wasting. Spending on public schools is a complete waste of money because an educated public is the last thing we need in Zambia. It is an obedient workforce, just smart enough to operate the machines and do the heavy lifting of goods that is all we really need. For, if people are educated, they will get some ideas on how to fraudulently access money from the bank without the bank manager knowing. Spending on roads and building bridges is another of those wasteful expenditures that Government always seems so eager to implement. Now some of that is surely because some Government officials have friends and relatives who run the roads and culvert building tuntemba. Remember the sky-blue painting of mini-buses saga a couple of years back in which tuntemba firms were formed to blend this colour of motor vehicle paint? It is gratifying to note that the Government itself has seen something grey in this and will now build roads, culverts and bridges to areas with economic potential. Payment of retirement pensions and social cash transfers are vexing matters. If these old folks went through their whole lives without realising that some day they would not be able to work anymore, it serves them right. As such, they should have stocked enough cash in the silos for use in retirement without having to pester government with their long dried up lips for payment of pension dues. And this social cash transfer facility; paying people for doing nothing but for booze and smocking of tobacco and weed? Look. Money to be saved from these budget proposals would go towards paying allowances to members of Parliament who would debate and pass this very budget. You see, these former job seekers took a risky deed of paying an entrance fee before getting a job and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) do not seem to know about it. It is, therefore, only proper that the new legislators recover their money spent on merely applying for the jobs they occupy. In conclusion, it must be mentioned that these shadow budget concept notes are also based on the five pillars, with the first pillar leaning on the pillar which is standing on the pillar that is lying down near the standalone pillar but close to the last pillar. Let us do something and let God help us implement the 2017 budget prudently. kapenyatheobserver@yahoo.com

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One Response to “2017 national Budget expectations”

  1. Oh no
    Why is this government soo evil and wicked.

    Any ways I can not say much but the least I can say is dununa reverse sologan has changed to dununa regret.