Hide your sugar. Hide your coffee. For as announced by our illustrious members of parliament on Tuesday: The aim is to make Mauritius become the first drug free country in the world.
Even after the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) admitted that the idea of a Drug free world is unachievable and had unintended consequences, Mauritius aims to set itself apart by adopting a strategy that is bound to fail. I fail to understand that members of parliament who so often use Google as a supreme giver of knowledge (including questionable scientific facts) haven’t seen any of the articles published by international experts, international organisations, and even ex-UNODC chiefs? No wonder Mauritius was not present at UNGASS.
During the debate that raged on about the NATReSA Repeal Bill on Tuesday 19th April – at this point I have to direct you to the Hansard that was published, read it to see the eloquent language used by our leaders –, members of Parliament elected by the masses openly criticised NGOs working in the field of Drugs, saying: “NATReSA was like a cow and it was simply allowing itself to be milked by a number of NGOs who were, in fact, incompetent. The incompetency started from the very apex of NATReSA coming down up to the ground level.”
This shows that the person who said this is an expert on drugs, and should have actually been part of a team to formulate a National Drug Control Master plan – which by the way is non-existent in Mauritius. Perhaps if it did exist and was implemented, the so called incompetent NGOs could have had a more coordinated response to address problematic drug use?
The NaTRESA wasn’t functioning, there’s no denying that, and the long debate that ensued during the parliamentary session demonstrated that it needed at the very least to be improved.
What shocked me more is that Nicolas Ritter, the Director of PILS, a person openly living with HIV, who has contributed to the fight against this disease in Mauritius, and is recognised not only nationally but internationally as well for the work he has done, was made fun of during the very same parliamentary session. His name was unashamedly distorted as a way to make fun of who he is, and what he has accomplished for this country – by a member of Parliament, a person elected to represent us common mortals at the highest level of decision making in Mauritius. To me, that is just stooping too low.
How can we then expect civil society to engage in a civilised dialogue with the people currently governing us, when this is the sort of attitude being shown?
To address problematic drug use, we need to understand that firstly it is a complex issue, secondly that we need a coordinated multi-sectorial approach (which includes NGOs). With the NaTRESA Act being repealed, everything will be under the Harm Reduction Unit – comprising only government officials.
Are we to expect these government officials to have the necessary capacity alone to formulate the coordinated response nationally to address problematic drug use? Without the field expertise of NGOs who work closely with the marginalized communities and are present in the field? Harm Reduction in itself is a term encompassing the notion that people sometimes cannot stop using drugs BUT we can minimize the harmful consequences by offering them the necessary programmes and tools to do so. I’m not sure the current government understands that, instead dismantling programmes in the name of “netwayaz”…
Dark days are ahead for Mauritius (or already here), if we embark on a quest that is not based on scientific facts, and is bound to exclude the very people concerned.
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