Memorandum submitted by UNISON
Please find below the UNISON International Unit's
evidence in respect of those aspects of the enquiry which are
most appropriate for UNISON to comment on.
1. UNISON is the major union for workers
in public services in the UK, with nearly 1.4 million members.
UNISON has a long history of involvement in development issues
through and with its sister public service unions in developing
countries. Its International Development Fund has enabled UNISON
to directly funded capacity building work of sister public service
unions in nearly 30 developing countries, many of which are subject
to Policy Support Instrument, Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility,
and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative mechanisms. These
mechanisms operate to bind IMF and World Bank policy and practice,
so the agendas and activities of the two institutions often shade
imperceptibly into one another.
2. In May 2007 UNISON participated in a
joint delegation with Oxfam to Malawi to investigate conditions
in the country's public health and water services.
3. UNISON has the following comments to
make relating to the following points from your suggested framework:
a) whether funding through the World Bank is an effective mechanism
for advancing DFID's overriding priority of progress towards the
Millennium Development Goals; b) the impact of World Bank conditionality
on governments and the poor.
4. UNISON recently made a consultation submission
to DFID regarding its Country Assistance Plan 2007-11 for Malawi.
It became clear to UNISON in the course of dialogue with our sister
public service unions in Malawi and the Unit's own research, that
DFID's own significant efforts to support the development of services
providing essential basic needs to the poor majority in Malawi
are being undermined by the policies and practice of the World
Bank—which DFID, as the Committee is already aware, provides
significant funds to.
5. DFID's own Country Assistance Programme
for Malawi refers to the need for greater investment in services
which seek to address unmet essential basic needs. At the same
time, DFID/UK Government is set to increase its funding to the
World Bank, which through its close relationship with the IMF,
are the very institutions which act to depress and restrict recurrent
public expenditure and promote privatisation through the application
of the Policy Support Instrument, Poverty Reduction and Growth
Facility (PRGF), and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries' Initiative
mechanisms.
6. The Malawian Government agreed a new
PRGF with the IMF in 2005 and as a condition of this had to agree
to "privatisation or commercialisation of Malawi's remaining
state-owned companies". The Blantyre and Lilongwe Water Boards
are state-owned, and DFID funds a World Bank agency called the
"Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility". Despite
its name it is being used in Malawi to actively promote a pro-privatisation
agenda in the water utility sector, focusing around the Blantyre
and Lilongwe Water Boards.
7. DFID budget support funding to PPIAF
and to the World Bank paid for initial attempted consensus building
towards a privatisation agenda in Malawi, and when civil society
opposition proved resilient, DFID funding through the World Bank
has been used to pay for a communications strategy and public
awareness campaign in an attempt to convince a sceptical civil
society and political class as to the merits of privatisation.
8. These efforts at hostile privatisation
are of extreme concern to our sister public service union, the
Water Employees Trade Union of Malawi (WETUM), together with many
elements of Malawian civil society. They believe that privatisation
of public water utilities are not in the poor majority's interest.
9. The then Secretary of State for International
Development, the Rt Hon Hilary Benn, announced on World Water
Day 2007 that DFID would be looking to support Public-Public Partnerships
in the water sector in order to support public water utilities
as an alternative to privatisation. However, as observed above,
UNISON believes that the activities of DFID-funded World Bank
agencies are wrong.
10. UNISON would have to question whether
the use of DFID funds granted to these institutions is consistent
with DFID's stated country objectives for Malawi, or whether in
fact these institutions' activities are acting against DFID's
objectives.
11. It should be noted that an acknowledgement
of the sovereign right of developing country governments to form
their own economic policies and development strategies is a commitment
of the G8 Gleneagles Communique of 2005 (Point 31). The UK Government
was of course a signatory to this agreement. UNISON acknowledges
that the UK Government has done more than most G8 governments
to honour other commitments made in this pledge document, but
this point still needs to be followed through on.
12. Under Part III, Point 17 of DFID's Malawi
draft Country Assistance Plan, DFID states that it will work with
the World Bank " . . . to ensure implementation of the Bank's
good practice principles on conditionality". As this occurs
at the very end of the document, UNISON hopes that its positioning
does not reflect a lack of priority.
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