Government warns disloyal civil servants

Government says it will not hesitate to discipline any erring civil servant found working against its development agenda.

Community Development and Social Services Minister Emerine Kabanshi says what civil servants must bear it in mind is that there could only be one government in power at a time.

ZANIS reports that Ms. Kabanshi said this when she paid a courtesy call on Acting Livingstone District Commissioner James Zimba at his office today where she urged him to deal with disloyal civil servants in the district.

Ms Kabanshi told Mr. Zimba to take stern action against civil servants who were trying to deter effective implementation of government programs in the district.

“DC you are our eyes and our ears; deal with the officers that are trying to deter the country’s development. We want our programs to be effective; we don’t want to remain poor for the rest of our lives when Zambia is a rich country,” she said.

Ms Kabanshi urged pubic service workers in Southern Province to be loyal to government as they could not serve another master while they were still in the boat.

“I would like to urge all civil servants in Southern Province to be loyal to the government in power and remember that all programs being implemented are as a result of the policies by the PF. You cannot serve the other master when you are still in the boat ,” she said.

The Community Development Minister also stated that she would closely monitor social protection programs in Livingstone and other districts across the country.

Ms Kabanshi said this was in line with President Edgar Lungu’s quest to reduce poverty levels in the country which had dropped from 60 percent to 54.4 percent.

She however, said the poverty levels were still high in spite of the reduction and her Ministry would scale up the number of beneficiaries on social cash transfer programs.

“When we initially introduced the social cash transfer in Livingstone the numbers were quite few about 500 beneficiaries; now we are on 750 and want to increase to about 2754 as that is our target,” she said.

And Ms Kabanshi said her Ministry was also implementing the community based rehabilitation (CBR), under the department of social welfare and it was also being monitored closely.

“We want to monitor CBR services also since in 2018 we will be hosting an international conference on the same and as a country we want to showcase our services since many people nowadays need rehabilitation after accidents and suffering from diseases which leave them with physical disabilities and mental issues,” she said.

While in Southern Province, Ms. Kabanshi will visit Kazungula, Zimba and Gwembe district where she will district motorbikes and empower women’s clubs with equipment.

Earlier, Acting Livingstone District Commissioner James Zimba said the operations in the city were running smoothly and no one was being harassed due to invocation of Article 31.