POLICE in Southern Province have scaled up sensitisations in crime-prone chiefdoms such as Chikanta and Sinazongwe for people in possession of illegal firearms to voluntarily surrender them.
More than 40 illegal firearms have so far been recovered from last year to date, in among other chiefdoms, Chikanta, Nalubamba and Sinazongwe.
The chiefs recently attributed the rising murder cases of people on suspicion of practising witchcraft in the province, to traditional factories producing home-made guns.
Provincial Police Chief Mary Chikwanda said in an interview that more than 30 illegal firearms were recovered in 2014 while about 10 were recovered from January to date.
Ms Chikwanda cited Chief Chikanta in Kalomo and Chief Sinazongwe’s areas as notorious chiefdoms were most illegal firearms were confiscated.
“Our sensitisation meetings with chiefs and their subjects are going on, we have started with those mostly crime-prone areas and we have so far recovered some illegal firearms,” she said.
She said the desire of police was to visit all chiefdoms in the province to dialogue with traditional leaders and their subjects to work together in combating crime.
Police in the region last year secured two convictions of people found in possession of illegal firearms.
Some chiefs, however, were concerned that punishment under the Firearms Act was not custodial and that fines were inadequate to effectively deter would-be offenders.
I don’t see anywhere where home-made guns are adequately qualified. It would be good to explore how these guns are produced so that, in the lines of Kalashnikov, we can have our own brand. We always fail to harness ingenuity by advancing punishment.
@ Kaloki, exactly! The government should actually encourage these “home” gun manufactures by funding them into improving their technology and building them gun factories and Zambia would in no time be exporting guns under the trade mark of MUTUTILA Automatic weapon and earn the much needed foreign exchange.
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Admit it guys, business acumen is alien to Zambians.
I lived for 3 years in Luanshya, the most profitable business I saw was that of Bana Penelope. She had a kantemba, selling kampompo.
No wonder you failed G7 three times,for three years you could only see a kantemba business in LY,vele dull.
In Zambia it seems business ideas are more with these who did not go far in school. The educated are never business minded and fail to support entrepreneurship. One would think the right thing would be to regulate and licence the home made guns. The benefit would be for financing of economy in taxes, tack record in case of crime and encourage business business acumen. Maybe the Zambian army in due course, if this acumen is encouraged, could use home made guns and spare our forex to strengthen kwacha!!
I concur with previous writers. These people producing guns should be encouraged to do so legally instead of harassing them. Let them form companies to legally start producing guns that is creating employment for the youths. Let their Talents be exposed.
don’t harass them just formalize the process and put in quality control and safety measures. Patent the idea and collect tax from anyone intending to use the knowledge.