Scandal of wasted British foreign aid
IT IS madness for a government strapped for cash to continue to fund projects overseas. Unfortunately, the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP is a shibboleth to the liberal elite who are well-insulated from government cuts. Some years ago, I worked as an instructor for Outward Bound at its centre in Lesotho in southern Africa. I saw many aid projects, which had been started with the best of intentions and at considerable cost by various western governments, being abandoned. Within a 50-mile radius of our centre at Thaba Phatsoa, there were at least a dozen broken-down wind pumps, derelict health centres and dried-up fish farms. These were run by volunteers from abroad with the aim of being handed to the locals once they were established. Sadly, in most cases this smooth transition did not occur or funding dried up. The Outward Bound centre was near a dam that had been built at a cost of £40 million by the British government 15 years previously. By southern African standards, Lesotho has a reasonable annual rainfall, buts this falls in short-lived thunderstorms during the summer. The aim of the dam was to capture this rainfall to provide irrigation throughout the year. At first, the lake behind the dam was a mile long and half-a-mile wide. No funding was available for maintenance so over the years debris swept in by rainfall had reduced the lake’s capacity by twothirds. The water at our boathouse was four metres deep when it was first built, but it was reduced to a marsh. Dredging was vital, but had never occurred. A sad waste of what once was a valuable resource. This was true, too, of the Outward Bound centre, which was built to promote multiracialism and funded by mining company Anglo American. But once this funding ceased, it closed. PETER CHARNLEY,
Penrith, Cumbria.