Wednesday, April 24, 2024

40.8% of Zambians living in extreme poverty

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VICE-PRESIDENT Inonge Wina
VICE-PRESIDENT Inonge Wina

The 2015 living conditions monitoring survey has revealed that 40.8% of the country’s population is living in extreme poverty.

The survey has also revealed that 54.4% of the country’s population is poor, while 13.6 percent of the population is moderately poor.

The survey indicates that 76.6 percent of the population in rural areas is poor, with 23.4% of the urban population being poor.

Western province has the highest population of the poor at 82.2% with Lusaka province having the lowest 20.2%.
And speaking during the dissemination of the survey results in Lusaka today, Vice President Inonge says government believes in inclusive benefit of economic growth.

Ms Wina says the increase in income disparities are created when opportunities are not equitably spread as the economy grows.

She however, says government has continued to demonstrate the need to empower vulnerable members of the society by increasing their participation in the economic affairs of the country.

The vice president said this in a speech read on her behalf by deputy minister in the office of the vice president Chungu Bwalya.

20 COMMENTS

  1. This report is incomplete Ba LT. How do these results compare with the last survey results? Are we moving forward in the fight against poverty and at what pace? What is the pattern of consumption and what how the Gini coefficient moved to reflect changes in income distribution? Just some of basic information missing.

    • These stats cannot be correct. Lusaka where PF looters targeted Rwandans must have higher poverty and WP may literally be 100% poverty. The only people who are enjoying are the PF Eurobond plunderers.
      #ChagwaMustFall

    • They cant tell you how it has changed over years as it has tremendously increased in the past 5 years under PF.

    • you see, this is why i always argue that the education we receive is useless. I can assure you that the standards used to determine who is poor and who is not is based off of a western system where they look at the income of a family. Now we know they might use concepts such as people living on a dollar a day forgetting that zambia is not the western world where everything is so regulated that it is a crime to grow your own tomatoes in the back yard and if you did, you need to buy seeds from a registered merchant. these zambian statisticians fail to understand that they are still fed way above the dollar mark. they grow their own food. Their dollar earning does not require them to buy electricity,tomatoes and other vegetables. Education is knowledge of self and how you can further improve…

    • further improve YOUR environment, and not UK,America or Australia. If you dont learn about yourself in terms of history, science, economics then you are not getting an education. you are merely acquiring knowledge which 90% of the time will not be applicable to your own situation. that is why students at unza say, they only use 5-10% of the stuff taught to them during their formative studies. Wake up black man, wake up. Be independent. Remember, the conquerer must always destroy the things that made you happy about yourselves. thats what happened to us as an african people. they destroyed our cultural practices, our names, our languages, our folkway, mores and even our spirituality. we must wake up my beloved country men and women.

  2. my heart bleeds for western province . it is always celebrated as the land of extreme poverty . for the past 52 years of Zambia no tangible real investment has gone to the province. Its natural wealth , Cattle , has also been decimated without any meaningful mitigating measures from the Central Government.

  3. The stupid government must take responsibility for the misery of the general population.
    They were occupied with Power grabbing-by elections through out their tenure and forgot the citizens.
    They have recklessly plundered the countries financial resources and expect to live a good life, Hell No!! God himself will exact justice for the poor and they won’t live long enough to eat the loot…. ask ftj, willie Nsanda…. too many to mention here

  4. Very sad indeed & actual percentages should be much more than this because of selfishness. You award all big tenders to contractors & suppliers of countries which are stakeholders of financiers of loans you get. You keep on justifying your actions by saying that locals are not capable & don’t finish contracts, so the loans money is exported. How can they finish works when you kill them with the kickbacks you force them to give you? Printing of ballots, desks, chairs, solar lights tenders are all awarded to foreign suppliers. The little tenders that you give locals, you don’t pay them until they die of depression & causing liquidity in the country. You are making trips to go & woo investors to come & run tuck shops instead of that Richard of Branson’s calibre.

  5. very interesting. meanwhile the Litunga has given Chagwa 4 herds of cattle when 82% of his people are living in poverty. hence whatever these two are friends for only God knows. but surely it is not for the benefit of the barotse people.

  6. Apart from making these statements verifying poverty levels the gov’t must be looking to create a larger Welfare Bill to support the identified poor, especially with the IMF’s demand for Austerity on the way in. We plan now how to assist. As for each citizen, please look after your friends, neighbours, families.

  7. She should ashamed of her self.preaching about hunger in zambia without giving solutions of how to end it is silly.

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