Government is losing over K4 million from uncollected revenue by the local authorities country wide.
ZANIS reports that the Zambia National Marketeers Credit Association (ZANAMACA) president Mupila Kameya said the colossal sums of money if properly managed can help bring sanity to the surroundings in the markets.
He has since appealed to President Edgar Lungu to consider enforcing the Market Act in order to empower and strengthen the local authorities.
“We do not need any external aid to improve the sector”, Mr Kameya said.
He added that Zambia has the capacity to end poverty and create jobs for its people and that all that the marketeers need was a vibrant, committed and action oriented leadership to be placed in the right positions in order to support the PF vision.
Mr Kameya said ZANAMACA is ready to work with the government of the day in supporting the local authorities implement the Market Act which has remained dormant for many years.
The Market Act is a law which was passed by parliament to allow councils run all markets in the country.
This entails that councils should be legitimised to collect revenue which in turn will be used to clean markets, streets and create more jobs for the many unemployed youths.
It’s okay, we don’t need the revenue. We will just as Alex Chikwanda to borrow from other countries
Clearly government is incompetent. Chikwanda uses magic in finance.
Well said, remove the cadres from markets its your work to run the markets.
Councils used to collect Market levies before the decentralisation of the Local Govt ministry. I happened to do vacation work for one town council in those good days. Attached to the revenue collection department, we used to audit the market revenue collection and what we discovered was massive fraud. It was a rotten system where everyone was involved in the pilferage, from the levy collector at the markets to the accountants back at the offices. We reported this massive fraud and instead of putting corrective measures, the Town Treasurer fired us all, vacation students together with the new broom ACCA qualified accountant that they had employed who was still serving his probation period. So, I see no solution in giving levy collection to councils.