In a statement Party Spokesperson Antonio Mwanza said not only is the statement from the Head of State shocking but that it is also tragic that it is coming from a leader.
He said a serious government should know that electricity is a strategic national development commodity which countries world over are investing in.
“The statement by President Edgar Lungu that we should just be importing electricity from South Africa instead of building our own power plants is not only shocking but tragic, considering that it has come from the head of state. Electricity is a strategic commodity for national development and national security and all serious governments are investing billions of dollars in power generation to ensure sustainable development and national security.
He said the country is in the current economic crisis partly as a result of power deficit which has led to jobs loses due to load shedding.
“We are in an economic crisis right now partly as a result of power deficits. Thousands of jobs have been lost and small and medium scale businesses continue to close or pruning their workforce as a result of the continued load shedding; we are losing almost 20 million dollars every month on electricity imports and to hear the President say it’s better for us to be depending on South Africa for our energy source is flabbergasting. Maybe there is something that is motivating about import deals involving electricity that the public is not aware of. But with such kind of thinking on the part of those that have been tasked with the responsibility of providing leadership to our country, Zambia is doomed.
He said the country has the potential to generate enough electricity for both the country’s needs as well as for export.
“We have potential to generate, transmit and distribute enough electricity to satisfy the local needs as well as exporting to other countries, South Africa inclusive but because of lack of vision and failure to plan on the part of our leaders, almost 80% of Zambians live in the dark with no power to unlock their regional and individual potential for production, growth and sustainable development.
“Now we understand why the Eurobond money which was aimed at improving the generating capacity of Zesco can not be accounted for,” he said.
Lungu is insane. He spoke like a grade 7 failure who has failed 6 exams after repeating. He is a quack who believes him alone out of a population 13 million knows it all. Like him alone can work miracles in Zambia. All these travels need to be done by technocrats not him if what he is traveling for is business and investment. But we know that he is just traveling to get paid allowances. What a shame
@ House fly – LOL! He’s behaving like a upnd member? 😀
Thanks
@DC 10. I am not a UPND member after all I do not even know if HH would do a better job. Zambia right now needs a leader who puts Zambia first. A leader who will work to see that UTH has enough medicine and staff. Who will see to it that no sick Zambian sleeps on the floor in UTH, who will see to it an end to trips to south african hospitals. A man or woman who is going to be very careful with use of government resources. People in zambia are dying like they are not human. Yet we have a leader who cares less
The statement is usual business in PF and is reflected in the thinking of PF structures.
Why claim it was shocking ?
Are we suggesting we expected better from the President ?
I didn’t expected exactly that sub standard statement. To be surprised is to initially hold someone to a certain standard and then see something less of.
He doesn’t have a control and or no what he is doing.
Thanks
BB2014
Meanwhile 5 provinces were in blackout yesterday.
Why are you surprised???? You want govt to invest in power generation and later on insist that govt should privatise the power plant?
This is just one opinion. Just put your opinion across without insulting anyone
@house fly, just listen to yourself. To you the national health system is all about UTH!
And I am sure your “man or woman who is going to be very careful with use of government resources..” is the one who will not build roads because “people can not eat roads”…!
The statement is actually NOT SHOCKING, it just confirms what we Zambians with foresight have always feared and opposed, the having a visionless and dull person as a CEO of the country. All he sees are loopholes for kickbacks in the importation of anything. He has no interest of this nation at all but that of his pocket.
…the bottom line is that it is shocking if one considers the office other than the individual occupying it….
FDD, were you asleep? Where were you when this issue was being discussed?
If ECL doesnt change, Its those PF cadres who voted for him that will eventually kick him out of State House.
The negative comments are not UPND, but they are inclusive of all normal Zambians. There is a realization now by those who voted for ECL , that they might have voted for a wrong person, and they did so in order to maintain Sata`s Legacy.
If he doesnt change, such rebuke will continue, and he can forget about 2021, not far anyway.
I cant put it any better bro.
@1.1, yes and perhaps more, like the chief upnd member you mean?
Terrible 1mbecile has crapped in public again
Antonio Nawakwi, yes we should build some power generations of our own. But the rest of your statemenr is hogwash. Did you know that the countries you quote including south africa also make a provision to import power? That can be done by intergrating the regional transport systems so that power flows more easily to.where it is needed. That is what President Lungu meant. By the way did you know that your mother Nawakwi was minister of energy once and that during her reign not a single power generation was built or started for the future? Despite being an energy economist?
@Terrible…but there was no loadshedding during Nawakwi’s time at Energy Ministry at all. Normal blackouts existed but that’s all.
Am meant to believe that, the statement is for the short term solution whilst in the long run we build. Just thinking.
Don’t think for Lungu, don’t put words in his drunken mouth.
How difficult would that have been difficult to say?
We have a critical shortage of power, right now. To solve that problem, we can import power from our neighbours .
This is what the president meant.
But for FITITI , Alikwi and Mwanshya their understanding of issues is always in the reverse gear
Besides that, 1 trip to south africa for 3 days by our lovely president would pay salaries for iur poor doctors who for past 6months have not been paid. So this is where i see mr lungu out of league. He is one useless of a president. He is just doing zigzag pronunciations. He has no clue at all. Just read the statement he spoke when he came from south africa. He spoke clearly like someone who did not prepare. A grade 7 who failed 6times. I am sure you are familiar with such if you went to govt school
Come 2021 we are gonna need a president who is a crook. One who can dribble elections as well as international community. Whilst appreciating the opposing views of fdd sorry to say that Pf will still continue with a more vibrant president after 2021. Ecl is slowly losing traction mainly due to neg criticisms and &stupid petition. He is too calm to deal with &stupid opposition like the tribal leader Who should’ve been mazokas neighbor by now.
You are a sicko! I truly hope that Lungu is the lowest that Zambia will ever have to drag the sewer ponds to put somebody in State House.
@ 5
You have already convicted embezzler as president, why you need a crook?
Is there any difference?
@HH Techilema…actually you seem to be the stupid one if you really think that Lungu knows what he’s doing. The guy has no clue on how to run a country, let alone develop one. And don’t think that all the people who criticize him are UPND cadres. Some of us are just concerned Zambians who can recognize a good and intelligent leader when we see one. Lungu is a mediocre leader with absolutely no clue as to what he’s doing. And he’s not losing traction because people are criticizing him, but rather people are criticizing him because he never had any traction to begin with. He has been mediocre from the start. He has no clue, and no vision for the country.
Too much thinking in Reverse with this lot. No surprise here.
It’s like a LAZY father tells his children ati: “there’s no need for me to buy a car, we’ll be getting a lift from the neighbours. They have 2 cars”.
What will happen the day one car breaks down or their family grows? Just in 2009 when RSA experienced load-shedding, they cancelled exportation to all SADC countries. Today just becoz they have surplus power they want to come back through the backdoor to supply us with power.
That’s LAZY BUM5 LUNGU for you. Instead of investing in the potential power plants to create jobs for our desperate youths, he goes & creates jobs for XENOPHOBIC Eskom.
Just ask Mr. Yaluma (Minister of Mines) the segregation from fellow black South Africans he went through the time he was working at Eskom up to the time he became MP.
POTENTIAL…
CONT’D
POTENTIAL HYDRO-SITES
-MPATA GORGE – 540 MW
-DEVIL’S GORGE – 500 MW
-BATOKA GORGE – 800 MW
-MUMBOTUTA FALLS – 300 MW
-MAMBILIMA FALLS SITE I – 202 MW
-MAMBILIMA FALLS SITE II – 124 MW
-KABWELUME FALLS – 62 MW
-KUNDABWIKA FALLS – 101 MW
-MUTINONDO – 40 MW
-LUCHENENE – 30 MW
-MKUSHI – 65 MW
We should first develop all sites we do not share with Zimbos. I don’t trust Zimbos. They are just waiting to get an upper hand before they will restart victimising Zambians like the way they used to in the 1990s, not even allowing us to buy 3 leaves of bread from Zim.
Kafue Gorge Lower had been the number one site ever since the 1970s, ahead of Batoka Gorge but Sata made sure it would not be developed under PF.
@8.2 Buck teeth lungu …. now i understand why you call yourself buck teeth lungu. where did ba SATA make sure batoka gorge is never developed? reasoning using ama tallay is never a good thing in life, how about using your bain for once.
Some things politicians say it would be better to keep quiet. The problem in this country is that we value imported products more than our own. Where is our sense of pride? We should be proud of our own products. The President should be talking about building more hydropower stations and other investments in the energy sector. We are surely headed nowhere!
The President was just playing on some ones mind. He wants some guy with a lot of money in cows with corridor disease to say that he will make a power plant himself. Or wants critics to condemn this statement and then we go into a huge nuclear project.
What big nuclear project? You can’t even run a single line railway and you want to dream nuclear.
Atonio. You should hav your facts right about energy in zambia and africa as a whole right visa vis the unwillingness of developed world (major financiers of generation & transmition) to light africa. As us experts please before you expose your ignorance
Please, can you tell the name of one president in the “developed world” like our globetrotting convicted embezzler?
Dont comment on something you dont know. let your comment add value.
building power plants is on-going and new avenues such as nuclear power stations are being sought. importing power is a short term measure to cushion the adverse effects of current load shedding.
may God bless zambia
“a short term measure to cushion the adverse effects of current load shedding”…..
@emeka, you are the one that should not “comment on something you don’t know”
LOAD SHEDDING is a SYMPTOM, not the DISEASE! Zambias electricity problems STARTED with this incompetent PF Government in 2011. When they CANCELLED the Kafue Lower Gorge project. If they had any brains they would have realised that ELECTRIC POWER is far more vital to economic development that the roads they started building with the Eurobonds they have borrowed. And Kafue would have been completed in 2015! LOAD SHEDDING WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED! Do not believe the lies about “the drought”! PF are DIRECTLY TO BLAME FOR THIS! They wanted to use the Eurobond on projects easy to steal from. That is why it was run from…
@emeka! shut up you illiterate PF cadre.
Forget importing electricity ,what Zambia needs to import desperately is new leadership coz PF is proving itself to be analogue .
Lets import a new digital team to save Zambia.
Is it possible to sign Obama as our next president? I would like that very much.
ECL made that statement in the context of a short term solution…he said NOW we are better off importing (to reduce on loadsheding) than investing in building a power plant that will take long to complete. UPND always uses the B****M to reason.
Thank God the Zambians are seeing for themselves. It will be a rough 5 years
Actually it was tragic for such a pronouncement to come from the so called president of Zambia. Now we are begining to doubt his capacity to rule this country. It is very clear that the trips he is taking are just for pleasure and not to benefit Zambia. How can a person with such low level of thinking be a president? Are we Zambians mad people to put such a person to lead us? What a shame! And the PF cadres will be up in arms claiming it was not what he said. Fortunately, it is on camera on SABC and on radio. Amos Chanda is equally dull; he could not even censor that part so that we do not get to hear it here in Zambia. The press were proudly blowing it up as usual because their master had spoken. Surprisingly, you will see the fo.olish ministers justifying or modifying the statement to…
U have to forgive Edward. Its not his fault. Edward confessed to the Nation that he has no Vision. Without a Vision how would Edward see the need to build Power Plants. Edward thinks importing power from South Africa but to do Edward doesn’t know that he needs foreign exchange which is in short supply. Edward has no Vision or Plan and what he knows is to Dununa Reverse all day long while drinking away his favourite Jameson Scotchy Whiskey.If only he could hire some Economic Managers to help him out.
the man openly said he has no vision! what do you expect from him?
To think that Sata appointed this clueless clown as a Defense Minister!
It is very plain and obvious he knows less than zero about National Security.
Can we please have someone – ANYONE – in State House that at least understands what he is talking about. This fuul has been completely blinded by money and his own selfish greed and corruption. He does not even think about Zambia as a Nation, and should be put on trial for treason.
Kadansa in statehouse!
Kadansa for real. Only knows dancing en trotting globe.
Am glad didn’t vote for this crap.! My conscious is clean.
Most of the people are correct in their comments. We can not depend on importing such an important thing we to put up our on power plants. Why should we be like tenants in our own country?
Comment:Here in our country Zambia we have alot of people who kn make Zambia better and return the lost glory. For energy the better we ask Esckom of Uganda even Esckom of South Africa about the pepole who stopped Loadshedings (they are Zambians),but why importing electricity and we have got people who can do the job,if it means give them a contract the better. Lets united we are one family
I support PF but that was shocking to hear such statement from the president.I don’t know if he cares about the security of country ,development and job creation.Anyway we are still watching in PF.PF members don’t care if he is the president .He knows very well what happened to Guy scolt,Winter kabimba and his friends.We’ll remove him ku conversion if he doesn’t change.We supported him bcoz we saw sata in him but trying to be tourist won’t help.But we hope he’ll change bcoz we still love EL and our PF founders.We have hope in him so long as he respects real PF members.let us not give UPND a chance to rule coz of such statemnets from our president.He should help build the party otherwise if UPND wins he’ll be in jail.
Sata was the one with a vision? We are experiencing load-shedding because of him
@Moscow… you’re really as dumb as your clueless leader Lungu. If you can’t recognize by now that your man has no vision for the country, then it’s pretty sad. This guy has been in office for almost 2 years now. In that time he has accomplished nothing, except fatten his bank account and grow a pot belly. He has no clue about effective leadership, let alone how to grow an economy, create jobs, or develop a country. He displays no knowledge of global politics, or global economy, and lacks genuine interest in the plight of the suffering Zambians. All he’s interested in is his own adventures, evidenced by his incessant aimless flights all over the place, wasting Zambia’s meager resources. Since he came into office, his assets have doubled, his ministers have been looting the national…
(Continued)… coffers ( remember he reported this himself), Kwacha devalued, inflation shot up, terrible high unemployment. Civil servants usually go unpaid, as in the case of what happened recently with the doctors who had to work for 6 months with no pay. The money your leader has been wasting on these pointless flights could have been used to pay these doctors who are saving lives. Now that’s the legacy of your great leader.
A mad person is in state house. ECL truly amazes me at how he thinks. The guy has a brain of a chicken and happens to be our president. What have we done to deserve such a useless person for a president? Is this some sort of curse or what? I hear he made Zambia a laughing stock in Tanzania a few days ago after he showed a lot of ignorance about the operations of TAZARA and TAZAMA while his Tanzanian counterpart went to the meeting prepared. And now he wants to depend on south Africa for electrical energy. What he doesn’t understand is that while he is busy gallivanting all over, South Africa is investing in energy which he wants to import. He just wants to be stupid consumer.
I meant: ‘He just wants to be a stupid consumer’. I hear they have a new name for ECL in Tanzania. They are calling him Mbovu.
MANJE’ MWAYAMBA KULILA ???
You the useless kantemba nashalaneka party, were the same Clowns that were pro P.F, leading to the August elections, starting with your Edith coz you believed Chakolwa will reward your bootlicking with jobs.
Mwasasa!!
ENJOY FIVE MORE YEARS OF CHAGWA, he’s “The real deal”
If the people that have posted negative contributions are the intelligentsia of the country then it explains why Zambia is so backward. Infact Antonio should have consulted his President Edith Nawakwi as to why some hydro projects stalled when she was Minister of Energy. Edith is shocked I am sure by the utterance by Mwanza. In these days where financing to the a energy sector is rare, you have an interim measure of importing as you seek cheap finance. In the longrun of course we should build our own generation capabilities. Currently we are importing power at 18cents per kw, if Zuma offers us at less than 8 cents per kilowatt. .does it not make sense to change the supplier to service us in the interim? Kafue Gorge Lower is a huge project and will only be ready after 2021..in the…
WERE IS JEAN KAPATA TO CHALLENGE YOU MR MWANZA TO HER YOU ARE VERY MUCH BACKWARD TO SEE THIS IN LUNGU. IFINTU NI DUNUNA RESERSE.
Give him a break! I thought there was consensus that he was just drunk that night when he said those words
That’s what it means to be ruled by a mole. He imposed himself on us. We didn’t choose him. Museveni hacked into our electoral system and rigged the Zambian election. Now it’s no longer One Zambia, One nation. It’s instead, One Zambia, One Uganda.
YOU CHEAT WHO TOLD YOU THIS LIE ABOUT MUSEVENI.WE VOTED FOR ECL
Whatever happened to Samuel Chavula??
NO P.F GOON HAS EVER GIVEN US A SUCCESSFUL EXPLANATION ABOUT CHAVULA, SO ZAMBIANS CAN HAVE CLOSURE ON THIS SORDID EPISODE IN OUR ELECTORAL HISTORY!!
I still want to know, What happened to Samuel Chavula???
IWE C1KALA, SAY I VOTED FOR LUNGU, NOT ‘WE’.
Everyone recalls t about how one the jackal entered the ECZ sever room and the five days of delayed election result annoucement,that is the day M7 manipulted the elections to allow the hyena clan get on the helm of the kingdom. Our nation is no longer called Zambia, but a hyena kraal and Jamason Embezler is on the top milking everything the previous vultures left.
Worthless,visionless Lungu. All you *****s that helped this fool steal the election, I hope you get what you hoped for….more suffering.
Lungu is a failure.
Poor mentality.
I do remember when Sata was thinking of re introducing the Zambia airways . I was shocked by some comments from the opposition , who felt that not having one was better .
I just don’t know how Zambian can be so confused with life , the president EL . Was wrong for the comment he made ,no wonder EL didn’t show any property he owned before being president , he didn’t even have money to contest presidential elections .
I would say people must develop self sufficiency ideology than thinking of some one to it for them.
Renting a house is foolishness when you have money to build yours.
This is how our president is implying, not good at all I just wonder if he learnt anything from Sata.
Now we can see his true picture, he wants Zambians to remain dependants for ever.
Shu Shu Shu, there is nothing wrong with the Government putting up a power generating plant and privatising it after some time because power generation is strategic.
It happens in Malaysia , China, Singapo and other emerging economies that Government puts up investments in strategic sectors and even in places like rural areas where private sector has taken long to invest in, and when the investments run for some good time they get privatised. This is how they have managd to industrialise their countries and created jobs for their people.
I have said it before and I say it again, if Lungu is a dull president then HH is 55 times more dull. I do not have to remind you what daft statements HH made and the solutions that he offered us at the beginning of the power deficit during the run up to the elections…..too embarrassing to quote. But I can say that HH was so embarrassed with the comments from people that for once only he has heeded my advice to keep away from electricity matters.
This has to rank among one of the most extreme st.upi,dous statements I have ever come accross, and you should know I’m 65! In all my life, I have never heard such levels of g’utless f.oolish.ness and coming from this level of political hierachy, it’s frightening. For such, the good lord God Almighty would throw a sinful soul in everlasting fire, for blasphemy! I know Lungu sorrounds himself with unintelligent people, Dorah for one having failed to grasp the meaning of “nullity” in court despite all her degrees, and Mwamba for another, with his punky hair do that’s embarrassing us in Pretoria everyday. But to sink this law is unforgivable. And Ramaposa being the shrewd businessman that he is, you bet he will be here soon skimming us off becaise of “chizende chaKumawa” chagwela mu…
Zambia State House. This man, no wonder he walks like a praying mantis all the time! He knows “ni opusa” and he is always praying to god to give him wisedom but mulungu naebe, as Lozis would say, “morena mung’a bupilo usi shunguzi kale sitoto sesi mbwatamanisize munungu wasona fa lioma la mulonga”
Terrible,
Barelling us with such flawed double negative thought just shows how shallow you are and one can clearly see your head is saturated with the evil of “umodzi kumawa”. Chagwa could defacate in his pants while “dununaling reverse” style and you will swear it was HH who smeared him with anal chocolate. We know you Easterners when it comes to pissing in your own pants, one lousy general from Katete was tortured by KK for alleged dangerous coup plotting and chimuntu chimukulu chonse kuzinyelela mu combat sure!” Naiwe nzelu zako you are showing above niza matuvi, just go back to Malavi you “rat munching” lousy people, mwatusabile pe!!