Marshall’s Economic Recovery Plan (Part 1)

SALOM SHILONGO WRITES:

After World War II, Western Europe lay in ruins.

It was a hopeless place and the future looked bleak. The economy was in tatters. Infrastructures were reduced to rubble. Millions of people were destitute and desperate. Many people were out of work and faced starvation.

The war has ended. But another war was looming. Hunger. Diseases. Europe was on the brink of a man-made disaster. The continent that was once a beacon of hope to so many risks turning back to the Stone Age.

Thousands of miles away the Americans were scratching their heads, trying to come up with a European Recovery Plan on how to save Europe from turning into a hopeless continent. They knew a hopeless Europe was bad for America. Because millions of European citizens would be forced to move to America in search of a better life.

SOCIAL ILLS

Europe was likely to turn into a den of crime, prostitution, drugs, alcohol, violence and other social ills.

So, the U.S. Secretary of State, George Marshall, came up with an economic recovery plan for Western Europe. It became known as the Marshall Plan, after Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of post-war Europe. The program was designed to provide economic assistance to European countries that had been destroyed as a result of the war, in order to create stable conditions in the aftermath of World War II. In a space of months, a continent that was so destitute was turned into a place of hope again. The rest is history. But it was a history of hope. So, what can we learn from the Marshall Plan as Namibians?

BIG IN NAMIBIA

There are growing calls for the introduction of the universal basic income grant as a remedy for poverty in Namibia. But is it really going to solve our problem? I don’t believe that the universal basic income grant will solve our problems. Because there are too many unemployed people. So, a universal basic income grant is not sustainable, and you don’t need to be an economist for you to understand that a universal basic grant is going to cause inflation, which would hurt the working people and further worsen our situation.

So, instead of the universal basic income grant, we must rather introduce a basic income grant for the rural areas. Unemployed people between the ages of 23 and 59 in the rural areas must be given a basic income grant of a minimum of N$ 800, to be paid after every ‘two/three months.’ Because a monthly income grant is not sustainable.

In return for the basic income grant, every beneficiary receiving it must do some community work or must be involved in something that enhances his community/country.

For example, the grant recipients must be involved in food production, cleaning the environment, fighting crime, digging earth dams to harvest rainwater, planting trees to fight climate change and so on.

Every village must have a committee, to make sure that every recipient of the basic income grant is involved in some activity that enhances his/her community. – To be continued

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