with GIVEMORE MAKONYE
Dependency syndrome slows down development
FOR community development to succeed in any society, communities need to contribute and show total commitment and dedication to projects that improve their livelihoods.
While we should all acknowledge and appreciate contributions made by the government and development partners, there are development areas that we have to challenge on our own.
Since 1980, the government and various development partners have worked tirelessly to improve community development across the country. We have seen the construction of dams and establishment of irrigation schemes.
Strategically, these projects have been more concentrated in semi-arid regions to boost food security. Nutrition gardens have also been implemented across the country to improve nutritional health. Such projects have been deliberately set up to improve livelihoods across the entire country.
After getting these projects running in our communities, it becomes our duty to safeguard the infrastructure and maintaining them. The government and its development partners should not be expected to maintain fencing at our nutrition gardens.
We should not fail to take care of our own facilities. It is regrettable that some community projects have collapsed due to dereliction by beneficiaries. The major contributory factor to these negative developments is the common belief that the government should do everything for us.
If we get nutrition gardens, we will be having the fishing lines to make bigger catches. We do not need the fish as being provided with fishing lines should be good enough. Dependency syndrome will destroy all the gains made in community development projects. I encourage all communities to work hard to maintain our infrastructure.
We have let ourselves down by failing to take care of our own development infrastructure. We have failed to collectively confront community development challenges.
Some communities have even failed to rehabilitate their own village roads, preferring to wait for government intervention. They have failed to repair fences around their own nutrition gardens.
Some schools are in a dilapidated state although the communities have skilled builders. Clinics, dip tanks and other essential facilities are collapsing as the dependency syndrome manifests its negative impact on community development.
We surely should be self-motivated to selflessly engage in activities that improve our livelihoods. The government and its development partners cannot come to our village roads and nutrition gardens as they have other projects to implement.
We surely should not sit on our laurels and pray for manna to come from heaven. Let us all support development projects strategically devised to improve our own livelihoods. We, thus need to participate with commitment and dedication.
For community development to come to our societies, we have to abandon laziness and selfishness and adopt selflessness. Let us take care of available development infrastructure to accelerate community development.
Above all, let us abandon overdependence on handouts and make existing development projects more productive. We surely will help our country to achieve an Upper Middle Income Economy status by 2030.
