NGOs and "sitting allowance" culture

In his blog Dr. Khumbo Kalua recounts a story that is so depressingly familiar. It is an account of the corrupting influences of the aid establishment on many aspects of society. One of the tasks of Dr. Kalua is training Health Surveillance Assistants (HSA’s) in health projects in Malawi. He seems to have vast experience in this kind of work. Apparently the norm in such training courses is to pay participants $7 to cover lunch expenses. Dr. Kalua was to conduct such training in Mangoche where things went awry and turned into what he calls a "disaster".

Everywhere in Africa the donors, especially the NGOs, have nourished the culture of “sitting allowance” paid to induce Africans to attend the endless “workshops” that have become the staple of NGOs. This is supposed to ensure “participation” by the locals. In Malawi people along the lake are more aware of this dark side of “participation” trumpeted by NGOs. So Dr. Kalua was shocked that after carefully explaining to the 20 or so HSAs in Mangochi the importance of training in eye care and after apparently convincing them of the importance of this training, he was confronted with the question: What would be the allowance? He said $7 and all hell broke loose. In his words: “... the whole workshop turned into chaos with the HSA’s threatening to boycott the training and forfeit the highly needed skills if they did not get all their monies .”

The savvy Mangochi HSAs claimed that in order to “ win their favours and loyalty some NGOs pay them an allowance of up to USD 50 per day despite the government lunch allowance being USD 7.” And so they wanted more than the $7 offered.

For most NGOs these lakeshore “Participatory” exercises are ritually included in their budgets and they simply must hold them and have the usual photograph opportunities for the fund-raising exercises.

This debilitating “sitting allowance” culture must be stopped either through self-regulation among NGOs themselves or by law.