Workshop Syndrome
on Me Talk Pretty One Day (Malawi), 03/Nov/2009 06:50, 34 days ago
This article first appeared in The Nation newspaper on the 8th May, 2009. It was written by Muza Gondwe, a lecturer at the college of medicine in Blantyre.“Workshop per diems and daily subsistence allowances have created a new breed of man–the career workshop participant (CWP).A CWP is similar to a career student (someone who spends most of their life in university pursuing one degree or the other), but the CWP’s main occupation is to attend workshops.A CWP, for the sake of argument, is usually a fairly senior person in an organisation who travels in a project Toyota Hilux 4x4, demands exorbitant fuel reimbursements, insists on lavish hotel rooms and drinks heavily during the workshop cocktail reception. A CWP turns up late every morning during the course of the workshop, has the audacity to answer his or her infuriatingly loud cell-phone during the session and knows everyone at the workshop having attended similar workshops several times. This person has an arrogant air of self importance and collects allowances before the end of the workshop as he or she has to rush to another workshop on a similar topic by a different organisation at another beautiful lakeside resort.Everyday, workshops are being conducted under the premise of‘capacity building’ to improve the provision of healthcare services, quality of education or turning around economic woes. During these workshops, payments in the form of per diems, daily subsistence allowances, transport reimbursement, sitting allowances or incidentals are paid to participants.The allowances, which range from K500 to thousands of Kwacha, are meant to cover the living and travel expenses of participants but it appears these stipends have gone beyond their intended purpose as they are used to supplement salaries.Some, including myself, argue that in certain circumstances the money spent on a workshop could have been put into good use. It should have been used to build schools, buy drugs or develop infrastructure. I am saying this because the value and outcome of the workshop solely depends on whether the participant is going to implement what has been discussed, which, unfortunately, is not always the case.The value of workshops is not the subject of this article, but my interest is in the culture of allowances that workshops have indoctrinated. On receipt of an invitation to attend a workshop, people gloss over the objectives of the workshop and focus on the amount of the stipend and the workshop venue. Attending workshops has become a trend, a lifestyle, an exclusive club where the ambition is to attend an international conference in an exotic location with a dollar allowance. Without allowances, people won’t attend, even senior officials who do not necessarily need the ‘salary top-up’. ‘Brown envelopes’ (allowances) are inducements or incentives that secure participation of delegates where the higher the monetary motivation, the more senior and dignified the official.Involvement in this money-making venture is not limited to people working in the development sector—politicians, government officials and journalists too are culprits in this matter. I met someone at a WHO meeting who refused his per diem, saying it was excessive. He gave it back but the administrator said returning the money back into the WHO system was a lengthy process so he donated it to charity. The CWPs who were attending the same meeting forced the organisers to cut the programme to allow them an afternoon off so that they could go shopping with their ‘hard earned allowances’.The practice of dishing out money, particularly to senior officials, is a contradiction to the themes of most of these workshops. Is it ethical for workshops to hand out fat brown envelopes if their noble cause is to improve the livelihoods of poor people? Who is really benefiting here? It is almost like CWPs are getting paid twice– a monthly salary and allowances.If people working in the development sector are truly committed to and believe in their cause, it is high time their actions went beyond their grandiose conference speeches and workshop participation.”