Former Commerce Minister Felix Mutati has observed that the solar milling plants which have been littered around the country by government are more of decorations along roadsides as opposed to their intended purpose of playing a role in the reduction of mealie meal prices in the country.
And Mr Mutati says the PF government should stop playing with the lives of the people and deal with the challenge of escalating mealie meal prices and unavailability of the commodity.
Speaking in an interview Mr Mutati said it would have been prudent for the PF government to first deal with production of maize instead of setting up milling plants which are becoming white elephants especially in Northern Province.
He explained that there is no investment which begins with the end process before looking at the production side of the products.
“We have the issue of solar plants that have been littered all over the place. These things we were told are beginning to make a difference but the reality on the ground particularly on the Northern Province is that these things are not producing mealie meal so they are becoming more like decorations by the road sides.
“In any investment that you do you don’t start with the end process you start with the production so the concentration should have been on the productive capacity. How do we enhance the productive capacity of maize in order to have sufficient output to be consumed by our people.
“Now what we are seeing is a blame game that people are smuggling, that they are exporting that is purely an indication that at the level of management of the product we have a lot of gaps and my advise to government is let them get there act together because this is a serious problem which affects the ordinary person on a daily basis and we can’t play any more with issues of 1:lack of stoke and 2: hiking prices,”he said
He challenged government to explain to the nation why the country is facing mealie meal shortages when it has said that the stokes are enough and millers have also indicated that they have the capacity to produce more.
“Even during the last seating of Parliament we were assured by the Minister of agriculture that the country has enough maize stokes and that there was no cause for alarm, there was no cause for panic and that he had the whole act of both maize to be distributed to the millers and of stokes being available until the next crop.
So there are two key issues that remains unanswered whether the information that he was feeding into Parliament that is sufficient stoke is indeed accurate. If that information is accurate, where is the bottle neck in the distribution chain of maize to the various millers because the millers have indicated that it is not lack of capacity but lack of stoke,” he wondered.
True that
Can somebody update me on the Mobile Hospitals and Hearses if they are still operational. I was one of the people who did not like the idea of stealing and wasting money on these white elephants
The shortage of mealie meal is a sign that the figures given by government on the amount of maize that we have are cooked up, the truth is coming out and the fact of the matter is that we dont have enough maize. FRA is not realising enough maize because to meallers because they are rationing it.
It is only that it is coming from Felix Mutati, if it was Nawakwi it could have sounded better.
PF must be chased because of those solar trash they got loans for. Now they are bange smoking centers for unemployed youths.
CCJ sendrom….i.e Complaining, Criticising and Jealous….!
Spot on bwana Mutati advise these lumpens they cant think properly
You postings have been very disgusting!
Stocks naimwe ba LT,kwatinumu grade four
They are known in political language as “potemkin villages”. It’s a current trend by PF to trick the nation into believing that there is improvement in the country by showcasing half-done, incomplete, or useless projects on ZNBC. They will tell you that they have built a hospital but once you go there you find it doesn’t work as expected or there are critical shortages of medical equipment. They will tell you they have built a university but in the ground it’s just a structure without anything inside. Meanwhile, on these same projects, they have made contract after contract for themselves and reaped of the people of the nation.
Mutati is wrong , we in PF start with the end process, because the price and availability of the solar plant by that time was favourable, we couldnt just miss the chance to buy them. Coming to Mutati again please concentrate on your party and candidature , your advice to Govt is irrelevant cos. u are nobody close to decision makers
Wow. You are like…. really dull dude.
“…How do we enhance the productive capacity of maize in order to have sufficient output…”
Maize my dear bwana Mutati can never have ‘productive capacity’. It is an input, a raw material into a production process. You can assign productive capacity to an economy (Country), a company, an industrial plant but never an input. It’s like saying ‘enhance the ability of maize to produce (what, mealie meal?)’.
Sometimes just use simple English…
Pleas, even a grade 12 can see that is talking about enhancing the productive capacity of maize. Increasing levels of maize production. Producing more maize.
Bwana Mutati! Why don’t you join hands with Edith and run as her running mate with the following of the cadres you can muster and Edith’s grass root strong hold and us the women you can upset the tables…stop thinking inside the box…I know its hard since you are an accountant you cannot figure out what doesn’t add up…so join hands with an economist she will then use what is called add factors in macro -economics so you see the bigger picture….come on Edith for President!
Comment:LT is anti gvt today, watsup? U didnt get motivated today?!
Comment:@house fly the mobile hospitals are intact but they are very expesinve to operate.
if u had a chance to look at these hearses they were of low quality and of a cheap make.They are in the scrap yard awaiting to go to a dump site.
Coming to the matter at hand i think the pf led goverment should not play with pipoz lives.Its high tym they exhibit maturity and should b factual for once.Food security is the life blood of any nation. Thier must b goverment safety net to keep essential commodities especially meali meal at an economical price.know it all altitude will never solve problems that we are facing as a country.
In this vain i urge the minister of agriculture to resign on moral grounds or rather ecl should fire him for giving wrong information.
But I think solar milling plants were well intended to avoid monopoly by millers. On the side of production it is up to us the citizens to grow more maize, unfortunately there is always this tendency of wanting to blame the government on anything. We seem to be incapable of making decisions and plans even for our own families except to always think that government should do something for us. Even to sweep our yards we want to say government. It doesn’t hurt for households to buy maize directly from farmers to stock instead of depending on FRA.
There is no fuel to go looking for farms.
ba Spaka exactly Kabu’s point. u are already finding an excuse by pointing at high cost of fuel. am sure fuel to go about doing unproductive things u will find but not farming. some complaints are cheap.
The solar milling plants from China was another opportunity for the Chinese to experiment their new technology on desperate and naive African countries with naive leadership like Zambia! Just give it two years, no one will want to talk about these milling plants again!
They are simply making it more lucrative for businessmen to sale to neighbouring countries…govt has no business in the business.
NO WORDER ZED IS LIKE THIS HAVING PIPO LIKE MUTATI FAULT FINDING.
*ACCORDING TO YO FINDING SOLAR MILLING PLANT ARE WORKING VERY WELL BUT HAVE NO MAIZE TO GRIND
*ACCORDING TO YOU FARMERS SHUD FIRST GROW THEN LOOK FOR A PLACE WHERE THEY CAN PROCESS THERE MAIZE.
I disagree here its not always that u start with production then processing remember these are short seasonal crops its not like cattle,palm, were u wait for years to start harvesting hence the govt was 100% right to encourage farmers to grow more maize to feed the mill
*WITH THE ABOVE I ASK PIPO TO BE CAREFUL NOT TO BE MISLED BY F**LS WHO WANT TO SHOW THEY KNOW THINGS.
What agriculture has Given lubinda ever done in his entire life besides ploughing women? We have underachievers in Govt & expect miracles.
They called HH a Kachema & it backfired coz people on the ground know that no nation can survive without farming. Read “Ascent of Money” & you’ll understand that food/farming is the foundation of any economy.
But do you think these PF lumpens would understand a thing of what Mutati said? to them it just jargon. The earlier we get rid of this rot called PF the better for everyone including themselves.
..somewhere else were people are level headed…they have sense of shame and guilty…Lubinda could have resigned on moral grounds….or if we had a considerate leader, Lubinda could have been fired by now….coloured are better known to manage a garage for automobile better than a farm period…
…he was visualising maize as motor vehicle spares….which are in abundance tho most are not even genuine…
The effects of El Nino is real. Most countries in Southern Africa have been affected by drought and as a result maize production has been affected and it does not how many maize mills are in the country including solar mills if there is no maize to mill. The solution therefore lies in the constructions of more dams especially in the semi arid areas of Zambia such as Eastern, Central, Lusaka and Southern Provinces. Some dams were constructed under the UNIP regime when Zambia experienced a similar drought and typical of Africans and Zambians in particular there was no provision for their maintenance and are not in a satisfactory condition.
Last year Zambia produced surplus maize and exported to Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe without problems. This year Mutati thinks Zambia cannot buy the mills to control price-fixing by millers because the country did not produce enough maize. Is this maize problem a year-in-year-out problem for Zambia? He has been a minister, and I should doubt his fitness to manage Zambia in future with such reasoning. What a myopic leader!
Certain issues like the one on solar hammer mills is not meant to benefit the PF but even those from other political parties including the MMD to which Mutati is clinging to. Best Mutati can do is add on and spell out how he thinks the same can work better for the benefit of all, although some would not even have anything to do with the same.
Let him go to UPND where he was displayed like a chitenge on a calendar
Are we not seeing pipo smuggling maize and meal meal? Is the PF govt not giving millers cheaper maize? The best Mutati can do is to blame Lungu for being soft on those smuggling maize and meal meal. The idea of solar was excellent but rate at which the installation and operation is what we can be worried of.
April 4, 2016 | Filed under: International News,Latest News | Posted by: Newsroom ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Fuel lines stretched for more than a kilometer (half-mile) on Friday in Nigeria’s capital because of a fuel shortage in sub-Saharan Africa’s top oil-producing country.
Drivers in Abuja groaned and shouted in frustration when one station closed because it was apparently out of fuel.Associated Press writer Michelle Faul contributed to this report from Abuja.
PF campaign strategy – Donchi kubeba reloaded:
A. Obtusification: Lying that Lungu is on top of things and humble despite shortages, high prices, violence, corruption, inflation, unprecedented debts. Don’t talk about Lungu wealth and body size ballooning,
B. Falsification / Smear campaign: Accuse HH of sattanism, mason, privatisation
C. Tribalism: Demeaning other tribes that they cannot challenge Muchinga Bemba PF failure. Label all Non-Muchinga PF Bembas as Tonga and insult them as one.
D. Violence through Police and PF militias.
E. Blackout HH from public media.
F. Stop HH from campaigning.
G. Enhanced corruption using increased borrowings to bribe PF taxi drivers and marketeers
The country is stretched because our brothers and sisters in CONGO DR, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are having shortage of maize and meal meal. Besides we have selfish Zambians who are smuggling maize and meal meal, that’s why we are having meal meal shortage sir! we are near the boarder and this is real Mr Mutati
@ Assage
It is spelt as “mealie meal” not meal meal, “which is a relatively course flour made from maize”
Mutati is the last person to listen to.
Pama hammer mills pena mwalufyanya ba mutati just campaign for your lord hh
Why are there no solar driven hammermills in Western, Southern, buSoli and buLenje, North Western? Give me specifics if you have seen any and relate that as a ratio or percentage of the whoe consignment.
How many hammermills did govt procure from the National Debt and how many were allocated per province and what was the criteria. Do the areas that received solar hammermills like confetti produce surplus maize?
Same goes for Roads, Hospitals, Universities. What is the allocation (units and gross value) and the rationale thereof?
The loans for the one sided infrastructure “arrears” will be paid by all Zambians.