Falende hulpverlening (II)

Gin is associated blogger bij Sargasso en blogt vanuit Sierra Leone. Dit is deel 2 van de serie Falende Hulpverlening, waarin zij Sierra Leonezen aan het woord laat over de hulp die zij ontvangen. Vandaag het relaas van Lansana.

NaCSA is de Nationale Commissie voor Sociale Actie in Sierra Leone. De missie van NaCSA is publieke projecten te financieren, die inkomens genereren voor ‘zoveel mogelijk arme mensen als mogelijk’, en armoede te verminderen. Het zou er in de werkwijze van NaCSA om gaan bij te dragen aan duurzame ontwikkeling, dat weer moet leiden tot: armoedebestrijding, vermindering van het risico op conflict, en het verhogen van het welzijn van Sierra Leonezen. NaCSA is een grootschalig project, en opereert op verschillende gebieden. Educatie bijvoorbeeld, door het bouwen van scholen, maar ook activiteiten die betrekking hebben op gezondheid, zoals AIDS campagnes. NaCSA wordt gefinancierd door: African Development Bank, Department for International Development (DFID/UK), de Franse overheid, de Sierra Leonese overheid, Islamic Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) en de Wereldbank. Op haar website en in de kranten publiceert NaCSA regelmatig haar achievements. De foto’s bij de berichten tonen de mooie gebouwen die door het project worden opgebouwd in opgeleverde staat, en wie puur op het beeld afgaat, zou denken dat NaCSA het ontzettend goed doet.

Wat NaCSA echter niet laat zien, is hoe haar werken tot stand komen. Lansana (Sierra Leonees in Sierra Leone) geeft u een kijkje in de keuken van NaCSA. Hij legt uit hoe de doelstelling ‘inkomens genereren voor arme mensen’ in de praktijk wordt uitgewerkt, en hoe duurzaam de ontwikkeling is die deze mensen doorgaan. Bij wegwerkzaamheden, een project waarbij NaCSA de lokale wegen ‘duurzaam’ zou reconstrueren, legt hij op camera vast welke machinerie NaCSA gebruikt om de – wat uiteindelijk een zandweg moet worden en zeer duurzaam zal blijken te zijn in het regenseizoen – grond vrij te maken van stenen en beplanting, en het grondoppervlak ‘vlak’ te maken: jonge jongens die niet eens genoeg betaald krijgen om zichzelf voor die werkdag te voeden.

Youth Exploitation
written by Lansana

Sierra Leone has gone through eleven years of civil war. Although it is popular to assume that diamonds were the sole reason for and behind the war, it were actually the marginalization of youths and the high level of unemployment amongst them, that led to the breakdown of law and order and absorbed many youths into the armed forces.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that the problem of youth marginalization should be tackled in order to build sustainable peace, but since the report has been published, not much has been done to improve on the position of youth in Sierra Leone.

Six years after the ending of the war, the unemployment rate amongst youths is still incredibly high. The cities are overpopulated with idle youths, who resort to stealing to survive. Against this background, it is always good to see youths hard at work, like the energetic group of youths who work on the major roads and streets in Bo Town: they dig drainages, close potholes with stones and level the sand roads, with the simplest tools thinkable: shovels to clear the soil, rakes to level the roads, wheelbarrows to transport waste and stones, pickaxes to dig, axes to cut big roots and trees, and cutlasses to cut sticks. Tools that require hard manual labour.

Passing by one of the work sites, I approached the working youths, because I was interested in their work. I wanted to compliment them for their work, because most of the roads and streets in Bo Town are in a deplorable condition, making them inaccessible, and they need maintenance. I was amazed about how youths are presently motivated to work towards nation building through community development. Many youth organizations used to carry out road maintenance as part of community development, in the exact same way. I therefore assumed that the work was a community based program.

But to my surprise, they told me that the work is part of a government project. One of the aims of the project is to provide employment for youth. Because of the kind of tools they were using, I decided to interview them, because there were no differences between the type of tools the ordinary youth organizations normally used to carry out their community developmental work. I asked them if they receive any token for their hard work. They told me that they work eight hours from 8 to 4 p.m., for six thousand leones per day (1,70 euro). An amount equivalent to two meals or a fifteen minute phone call. They don’t get food for work, no medication and no drinking water. At the end of the day, they will have spent about two thirds of their daily earnings on their basic needs, leaving them with a crappy one thousand leones bill, that cannot buy them anything useful. The youths told me that when they learnt that the project is government sponsored through the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA), that in turn is sponsored by international institutions under the guise of ‘developmental aid’, they really regretted to have involved in that kind of exploitative work. Even the youths themselves had had the idea that the project was community funded, as it used to be, for this type of labour.

The workers complained to their bosses many times that they had pains all over their body, but nobody cared to listen to them. The day I visited the worksite at Njagboima section, most of the workers were fired from the job, supposedly based on their poor performance. Another batch of fresh youths was hired to take over. The laid off workers were paid 24.000 leones, for their last four days of work. In front of me, one of them paid a foodseller 18.000 leones for food she had supplied to him on loan. His net earnings for four days of hard labour: 6.000 leones. Not even enough to feed him for one day. Another worker did not know how to use the money. He had been starving himself for days, in order to save for other domestics purposes. What was he to buy?

With pealed hands from digging, pushing wheelbarrows, and cutting roots and trees, they left the worksite in dismay. They would like to find employment, but they have learned to stay away from exploitative forms of employment. The workers complained that as long as the work is going on, nobody cares to document it, but immediately after the completion of the work, pictures will be taken to impress the public. Society will never know the youths who contributed to the construction of the new road, and do their bit to build the nation.
—

Over de serie ‘Falende Hulpverlening’: Hulp moet helpen, maar helaas gaat er in de internationale humanitaire hulpverlening en ontwikkelingssamenwerking ontzettend veel mis. Sierra Leone is één van de landen waar al meer dan tien jaar veel geld en moeite geïnvesteerd wordt in humanitaire hulpverlening. Toch is het land nog altijd het armste land ter wereld, en bleek uit onderzoek van de VN vorig jaar dat Sierra Leone nog altijd de slechtste plek op aarde is. In Sierra Leone is nauwelijks schoon drinkwater, er is geen regelmatige elektriciteitsvoorziening, de gemiddelde leeftijd schommelt tussen de 37 en 42, de kindersterfte is torenhoog, een schrikbarend aantal vrouwen overlijdt tijdens de bevalling, 60% van de bevolking is nog steeds analfabeet, en meer dan de helft van de bevolking leeft van minder dan een dollar per dag. Uit de harde cijfers blijkt dat hulpverlening aan Sierra Leone al vele jaren grandioos faalt. Hoe komt het, en wat zou er aan gedaan moeten worden? In deze serie geven Sierra Leonezen hun eigen kijk op de hulp die zij ontvangen.

Informatie elders: In de White Man’s Burden beschrijft William Easterly, voormalig World Bank medewerker, uitgebreid hoe westerse instituties door verkeerde hulpverlening enorm veel geld verspillen. De Nederlandse journaliste Linda Polman beschreef in haar boek ‘De Krisiskaravaan’ hoe noodhulpverlening soms haatregimes ondersteunt, of oorlogen in stand kan houden. Renzo Martens maakte de ‘documentaire’ Epidsode 3, waarin hij de westerse mens een spiegel voorhoudt over hun houding ten opzichte van Afrika (te zien in Het Stedelijk Museum Bureau).