Message-ID: <35A47F16.85E33BA7@mail.ptl.com.mt> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 10:28:06 +0200 From: mailto:vdimitroff@MAIL.PTL.COM.MT Subject: Re: BAD EXPERIENCES etc.. To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Mr. Abdus Samad doesn't contribute much to the argument for only one reason: he forgets to be s_p_e_c_i_f_c in his statements.While I have reasons to believe all these things DO happen, I never witnessed a case, therefore I would not make such public statements. And I am NOT an overpaid employee of any of these organisations.
This issue has popped up on multiple occasions in this list and elsewhere; it always rotates around a)consultants are overpaid b)their 'advice' is either incompetent or corrupt. This could easily be true in more than one case, however it can also be a matter of perceptions:
- the judgment on remuneration is passed by badly UNDERpaid local professionals and intellectuals, who see a genuine injustice, only in a 'reversed' light... - advice sharply contrasting with prevailing local wisdom is sometimes seen as incompetent, while this was precisely the reason for bringing external consultants: local experts, no matter how talented, cannot detach themselves from biased and single-sided views of the picture. External experts (are supposed to) have seen more than one country in a similar situation, have exposure to historical experience and would know what works, even if it sounds suicidal to local people.
In any case, it is not serious to refer generically to 'travelogues'; if you wasted everyone's on-line time and disk space with your posting, please give a concrete example of such a 'travelogue', or of a donor agency 'conspiring with poor leaders'. Then, given some evidence, members of this list could expose the culprits, fight for competent, honest and cost-efficient consultancy and thus make some real contribution to DEVELOPMENT.
Pardon, what was the subject of this list?
... ... ... ... ...
Abdus Samad wrote:
> I have no specific experiences of world learning but
> plenty of experience with bad donor assistance.
>
> 1. For example, when poor quality consultants arrive
> to live in super first class comfort at inflated
> salaries and pick local brains to write a poor
> travelogue.
>
> 2. For example, when missions from international
> agencies tell policymakers to default on domestic
> debt while treating external creditors with deference.
>
> 2. When the donors through their financing prop up
> corrupt leaders, dictators and those who violate
> human rights.
>
> 3. When donors conspire with poor leadership to
> develop poorly concieved policies with no
> responsibility for those policies and the domestic
> talent is left with only one opportunity: to migrate.
>
> if you do not see all this happening, you must be one
> of the high paid cosultant or employee of one of these.
> I can find hundereds of these examples.