Building Of A K250 Million Drug Rehab Centre Progresses – Veep

Plans to set up the first-ever National Drug Rehabilitation and Skills Development Center at a cost of K250 million have advanced.

Vice President Mutale Nalumango, has disclosed that the centre which will be built and operated through a public private partnership, will offer medical care, psychological support, education, vocational training, and social reintegration.
She has explained that through vocational training, life-skills education, mentorship, and job placement, beneficiaries would be empowered not just to survive, but to reform to be responsible citizens.

Mrs Nalumango has explained that carpentry, agriculture, tailoring, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), plumbing, and entrepreneurship are among trades that will be offered at the center.

The Vice President said this during a stakeholders’ breakfast meeting convened to mobilise resources for the construction and operationalisation of the facility.

“For too long, rehabilitation in our country has been under-resourced, overly stigmatised, and treated as a peripheral concern. Public and private treatment facilities have been few, often overcrowded, and lacking the holistic support systems necessary for lasting recovery. It is for this reason, that in 2023, our government, under the able leadership of the President, Mr. Hakainde Hichilema directed that there be established a multi-facility rehabilitation centre to address the plight of persons struggling with drug dependency”, Mrs Nalumango said.

She has since called on the business community and other stakeholders in the country to help mobilise resources in order to ensure that President Hakainde Hichilema’s vision for the facility is actualised.

Speaking during the same meeting, Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security Jack Mwiimbu has bemoaned the high levels of drug abuse in the country, further attributing it to the rise in street children and youth commonly known as Junkies.