Zambia Direct Democracy Movement (ZDDM) vice president Charles Kafumbo has welcomed the Parliamentary Committee’s idea on setting up a Zambia Railway Board.

Speaking in a walk-in interview with Pan African Radio, Kafumbo said the railway system must now be prioritized and should now connect rail lines across the country for efficient transportation of people and goods.

Kafumbo said the railway system has been neglected in the past through inadequate funding in this transportation sector and has expressed optimism that funding will now be available to the sector.

Kafumbo added that once the idea is implemented and echoed the Vice-President’s sentiment that this will decongest the roads in ferrying people and goods as well as reducing road carnages.

“We welcome the Parliamentary Committee’s idea on setting up a Zambia Railway Board” Kafumbo said

The state cannot be represented by very corrupt, bribable, power and money hungry politicians who if paid handsomely enough can even insult themselves publicly and be expected to yield plausible results. Entrusting individuals like home affairs Minister Steven Kampyongo, Defence Minister Davies Chama, Justice Minister Given Lubinda, Finance minister Felix Mutati, Agriculture minister Dora Siliya with instruments of power is tantamount to acquiring an express ticket to an economic sabotage. These people are given to parading with political statements on the media which make them seem like they are working in the best interest of the people of Zambia but when in the actual sense they are only concerned with the acquisition of taxpayers wealth. It seems like their foresight and interpretation of the practical translation of the national decisions they make is humongously derailed due to their putrid blatant characters of thinking about their bellies before they can consider the people they serve. Maybe we take a look at the few incidences where we have been lucky to have actually been availed with information concerning their fraudulent activities.

[pullquote]I thought since they have been singing about diversification into the agriculture sector they are supposed to be supporting farmers in every way that they can[/pullquote]

FELIX MUTATI
During the MMD era Hon. Felix Mutati who is the current Minister of Finance, at the time he was Commerce Minister illegally facilitated the establishment of Pepsi Company in Zambia without following the right procedures. Hon. Mutati personally was paid by Pepsi in order to be given the tax rebate for 5 years, and other conditions that disadvantaged other companies and indeed local companies in Zambia.

During his time as commerce Minister he travelled to India and met high ranking Pepsi officials and assured them that they can invest in Zambia, at the time Mutati received huge sums of money for his personal use to facilitate the establishment of Pepsi in Zambia. During the same period of the MMD under Former president Banda, Hon. Mutati again presided over a very corrupt transaction involving a local registered company called Sanitary World Limited under the auspices of Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) and Zambia Development Agency (ZDA).
It is on record that with the influence of Hon. Mutati CEEC funded a project which was to be undertaken by Sanitary world Limited to procure machinery that could produce diapers locally under the theme “Proudly Zambian”.However, Hon. Mutati connived with CEEC and ZDA officials to procure containers of already made diapers from [Nanjing Biaoyue International Trade Co. Limited of China and pocketed Thousands of dollars. As if that wasn’t enough Hon. Mutati went ahead and officiated the commissioning of the purported project by Sanitary World limited, which was held at Southern Sun Ridgeway Hotel.We challenge the Honourable Minister of Finance Felix Mutati to show the nation where they established a factory for Sanitary World Limited which was producing diapers. This is the kind of a person our country has trusted with the finances of our nation in the position of Minister of Finance.

DORA SILIYA
THE MALAWIAN Joint Committee of Parliament took to probe the maizegate scandal which exposed Zambia Agriculture Minister Dora Siliya’s. The deatails are that she flouted the legal procedure by instructing her Permanent Secretary to issue a Maize export permit of 50,000 metric tons to an illegal Transglobe Export Produce Ltd.
The Committee discovered that Transglobe did not qualify to undertake such a transaction because it was not registered tax payer in Zambia. The committee also discovered that Transglobe fraudulently connived with Malawian Minister of Agriculture Dr George Chaponda to get it business to supply the maize.
Again, while Minister of Transport and Communications in the Rupiah Banda led regime, Dora Siliya again flouted tender procedures by signing an agreement with a Cayman Island registered company for the valuation of the assets of ZAMTEL.
The Attorney General had advised Dora not to sign before certain issues were addressed but she disregarded the advise and signed a US$2 million deal.
On February 25, 2009 a tribunal was put up against Siliya led by Supreme Court Judge Dennis Chirwa – she was found guilty as charged, and she was forced to resign as a minister after so much resistance.

Anyway I am surprised that some people are surprised that these people are capable of such indeferrence towards the people who gave them the powers they have.Notwithstanding, I have failed to see how the ministers failed to see that reducing the floor for the purchase of a 50 KG bag of maize from a last year campaign price of K85 to K60 is injurious to the peasant farmers agriculture business.

I thought since they have been singing about diversification into the agriculture sector they are supposed to be supporting farmers in every way that they can. Maybe they are suffering from amnesia, if I recal very well, firstly,in the last farming season farms were ravaged by army worms which made the cost of farming to go up because farmers had to replant most of the crops.

Secondly the cost of farming was high last year because the kwacha was trading at K14 per $1. If anything the price for selling a bag of mealie meal was supposed to go up. Thirdly the delivery of inputs by the outdated FISP was pathetic. Inputs were delivered very late and caused farming to be a disaster for some farmers. We are likely to see a situation where farmers are going to bail out in the next farming season, poverty is going to increase from 75% to elevated levels as farmers are going to be so financially squeezed that they will be failing to pay for their children’s school fees or buy daily necessities like cooking oil, sugar and salt. This is nothing short of killing farmers and their business actively. And they are risking the failure of the precarious improvement of the agriculture sector.

All in all, we understand that they are trying to impress the nation with figures like single digit inflation rate and the price of mealie meal but they shouldn’t forget that victory gotten at the expence of others is no victory at all. So I am appealing to Hon Felix Mutati, Dora Siliya and President Edgar Chagwa Lungu to take time to think about these decisions and how they are affecting us the poor Zambians. And also to remember that 2021 is not as far as others may think.

By David Chishimba
Rainbow Party Coperbelt Youth Vice IPS

Dear editor,

I would like to commend the government, RDA and the Copperbelt Provincial leadership for the wonderful work done so far in the rehabilitation of roads on the Copperbelt. Fantastic works are currently underway to resurface all the township roads in Hillcrest residential area.

My concern, however, is with the large number of vehicles which are using these roads. A lot of trucks from the mines as well as the Congo are using the newly rehabilitated dual carriage way between Ndola and Kitwe without paying for its future maintenance in the form of road tolls. Previous plans by the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) to put up a toll gate near Dag Hammarskjold have not materialized. This dual carriageway can generate sufficient resources for future maintenance and possible expansion without government intervention. I therefore edge our hard working authorities at NRFA to revisit the original idea of constructing a toll gate along the carriageway.

Yours,

Ray

The Zambia Revenue Authority has warned that it will freeze all bank accounts whose holders have not obtained their Tax Payer Identification Number (TPIN) by 31st December, 2017.

The TPIN is a pre-requisite to all procedures of tax registration under Domestic Taxes and Customs Divisions.

ZRA Corporate Affairs Manager Topsy Sikalinda said it is a requirement by law for every citizen with a bank account to have a TPIN which should be submitted to that same bank for inclusion to their details.

He said in an interview that those with TPIN will not be taxed from their bank accounts but that the PIN is only an identification initiative by ZRA for all tax compliant individuals.

Mr Sikalinda explained that all the money deposited into individual bank accounts is already taxed and therefore, the acquisition of a TPIN would not lead to double taxation.

Roan Member of Parliament Chishimba Kambwili has appealed to Government to reconsider its decision on to drop the maize floor price from K85 to K60.

Mr Kambwili said in a statement that his humble appeal to the Patriotic Front government is that they should seriously consider increasing or reinstating the Maize floor price.

He warned that if this is not done, the poverty levels in the country will increase drastically.

Mr Kambwili said the recent announcement of the new maize floor price by Food Reserve Agency is a massive social economic blow and this could have extreme consequences in as far as the countries food basket is concerned.

“Firstly, it’s not a secret that the last farming season was catastrophic, in the sense that the poor farmers faced a number of problems during the course of the farming season,” Mr Kambwili said.

“To begin with the price of fertiliser was  expensive in comparison to previous years, fertiliser is a critical component with regards to maize farming and farmers cannot farm without it, making it a must have component, this means that farmers had to adjust to the increase in price to farm and harvest their crops successfully.”

Mr Kambwili said this alone is reason enough for FRA not to tamper with the maize floor price.

“As if the price of fertiliser was not enough, farmers were hit with another unfortunate occurrence where army worms invaded people’s crops and had a feast on what was supposed to be our feast as a nation. Army worms famously ravaged through the crops and this meant that farmers had to re-plant in some circumstances.”

He recounted that the maize had matured and grew to a reasonable size before the army worms left naked crops.

“The slow but steady response to the army worm epidemic did not help as it should have done in order to decrease the amount of cases. This served as a costly blow and farmers surely struggled to afford, the weather was somewhat kind (by God’s grace) so most farmers managed to replant and salvage something from the season,” he said.

“Moving on to the cost of production, transport, harvest, loading and storage was equally higher than the previous season because of the economic situation then.

The costs incurred where nothing short of enormous and the farmers certainly felt the pinch.”

The Roan MP said owing  to the circumstances surrounding last farming season, it would be prudent for the government to carefully consider the cost of production on the part of the farmers.

“The sad truth is a decrease of K25 is far too drastic for the farmers to make an income once they sell the maize, notwithstanding the fact that the maize market is not as phenomenal as it was in the past.”

He added, “On behalf of the voiceless farmers who do not have a platform to speak out, I would like to urge the government to increase the floor price to a number that takes into consideration the grave circumstances that surrounded last farming season.”

Mr Kambwili said this issue is pretty close to his heart because his constituency was faced with the brutal redundancies the miners of Luanshya went through as a result of plummeting copper prices.

“I was the governments torch bearer when this unfortunate situation arose on the Copperbelt, our able government at that point took the initiative to quickly empower the retrenched miners with agricultural land for them to farm and make ends meet, much of the farming season was disastrous for them as very few actually had the capital to farm and they relied on my National Assembly office as a means to farm.”

“I made 14 cooperatives through my constituency office and I continuously gave the farmers fertiliser and adequate equipment, through this smart initiative steadily we overcame the grave circumstances. So for them to be retrenched, then have their little means crushed as well, it is a painful thing to go through and it will be unreasonable to let that happen.”

He added, “Mind you, the economic outlook has marginally improved this year, compared to last year when the economic outlook was not as bright but the government still increased the floor price from K70 to K85. This raises the question as to why in a bad economic situation we were able to increase the price but in a steady and better economic situation we are unable to increase the price.”

“If this is to hold out, then the citizens are liable to think that we only increased the floor prices because of elections. I therefore kindly appeal to the PF government which is close to my heart to, seriously reconsider their decision to drop the maize floor price from K85 to K60.”