Government has said that the K50 billion allocated to Government printers for recapitalization will speed up efforts for Zambia to start printing ballot papers locally.
Transport, Works, Supply and Communication deputy minister Andrew Mwali said ballot papers would soon be printed locally following Governments decision to pump in K50 billion into government printers to address shortfalls.
Debating the 2013 budget in Parliament yesterday, Dr Mwali said the move would also promote democracy in Zambia and create confidence in the electoral process.
“The K50 billion allocated in the budget for the recapitalisation of Government Printers will enable us start printing ballots locally,” he said.
On the allocation of funds to the road sector, Dr Mwali said the sector had for the first time received huge funding for the rehabilitation and construction of roads.
He said K4.3 trillion had been budgeted for the road sector and that the newly launched K27 trillion road project dubbed “Link Zambia-8000” would greatly contribute to an improved national road network.
He said in the past, little effort was done to open up new roads and that the PF government would do so through the Link Zambia-8000 project.
He said the Link Zambia-8000 project had also taken into account the maintenance aspect which was critical to the sustainability of road infrastructure.
Parliament also heard that 907, 653 small scale farmers benefited from the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) during the 2011/2012 farming season.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Luxon Kazabu said government intended to revise the programme to improve its effectiveness.
Mr Kazabu was responding to an oral question by UPND Gwembe MP Brian Ntundu.
And Agriculture and Livestock minister Emmanuel Chenda in follow up questions from the MPS said Government would consider increasing on the numbers of beneficiaries as the country grew economically stronger to support the FISP.
Mr Chenda said currently more than one million farmers had expressed interest in the programme but that the resource base by the government was unable to support all of them.
The House heard that Government was committed to enhancing the independence of the office of the Auditor General in accordance with the internationally signed protocols.
Deputy Minister in the Office of the Vice President Harry Kalaba reaffirmed government’s commitment to upholding tenets of good governance which included accountability.
Mr Kalaba was responding to a question by MMD Chipangali MP Vincent Mwale who wanted to know what measures the Government had taken to enhance the independence of the office of the Auditor General in accordance with the Lima Declaration of 1977 and the Mexico Declaration of 2007 which had since been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as part of the UN resolution No. A/66/209.
He said the PF Government in its party manifesto was keen to ensuring that operations of the Auditor General were independent.
He said Government believed in a strong and independent office of the Auditor General so that Parliaments’ oversight role was strengthened.
Good effort ba PF. Another promise fulfilled. Keep it up.
:d
is that so?
Pay the farmers first. No need for more promises that will never be fulfilled.
Slowly but surely fulfilling. Pa Bwatooooooooooooooooooooo
resuscitating Government printers through this funding will be a huge saving to Government, we losing a lot in printing ballots abroad. In addition, this will create local jobs, instead of the jobs we are sustaining in RSA and UK!!! Anyone has a problem with that?????
#6, no sir, no problem at all.
This will translate to more jobs and pay.Way to go indeed
This is good, make sure that you put the money to good use. It is one thing to make pronouncements in parliament and another to actually do it. Above all, DO NOT give the tender of printing ballot papers to your friendly paper “The Past Newspaper”…..you know what I mean. Now that printing Ballots will be here, expect MASSIVE RIGGING and there will be WAR in Zambia. PF will try by ALL means to Rig the 2016 Elections. Monitoring MUST start NOW….UPND, MMD….Get ready.
The PF government gets a big plus for this, MMD crooks left Government Printers in the gutter. Very proud of this government; it time to cease sending business to South Africa.
its interesting how the world works. now that we will soon have the printer to print our own ballot papers,people will start complaining that elections are being rigged because the govt in power is manipulating the numbers of ballot papers being printed and so on. meanwhile in the western world seeing that they have lost their revenue they got from zambia through printing ballot papers.they will come up with a new machine that they say will be better than the former machines.they will use nice technological words to describe it and that the best part is that rigging through ballot papers is better monitored.so later on in zambia,we will opt for this machine and throw away what we have,hence giving them back the business they lost.
to finish off, in short we need a whole strategy in the way we conduct our elections,run our countries,our system of education. basing everything on the western standard is a big problem for the proper development of independent african states,zambia included. by the way,who decided that the western world should be the standard for everything. we should change the way we think as africans and the only way is to change our education system. why do we think everyone should go to university to contribute to national development. what do we think people who are good in math and physics are generally much more intelligent than say a student who is good in social work or geography or journalism.