ILLEGAL miners at Konkola Copper Mine’s (KCM) Nchanga South Open pit in Chingola have destroyed equipment worth K 500 million.

KCM production manager Osward Mulenga and Public relations manager Joy Sata confirmed that about over 80 illegal miners were found at the open pit on Monday afternoon and that one of them has since been arrested.

Mr Mulenga said the illegal miners went into the open pit mine to allegedly steal copper oils but they were caught by the mine and Zambia police officers.

He said the illegal miners who where armed with machetes and bars outnumbered the officers, started throwing stones and in the process destroyed equipments at the mine.

Mr Mulenga said the illegal miners started throwing stones at the slop stability radar and destroyed the equipment which monitors the activities around mine premises.

“The slop stability radar is used to monitor movements around the pit and the illegal miners knew that we would not be able to see their movements and that’s why they were aiming at destroying it.

“Apart from destroying the Cameras on the slop stability radar they also removed the autonator and some cables from the machine so that we could lose track of them,” Mr Mulenga said.

[pullquote]“We have since written to the Commissioner of police to assist us in finding out what’s causing all these illegal mining activities and she said she would come to our aid this week,” Mr Sichula said.[/pullquote]

He said the illegal miners further damaged windows of a driller and a land cruiser at the open pit mine.

“The driller was just recently acquired at a total cost of 1.2 million dollars and it will cost us a lot to have it fixed but for the time being we have hired a driller from Zambezi drillers who we are going to pay K 3.500 monthly,” he said.

He added that the mine had also lost about 60 tons of copper oils during the confusion with the illegal miners.

And Ms Sata appealed to all stakeholders including Government and various civil society organizations to come on board and help solve the issue of illegal mining as the issue was getting out of hand.

She said the issue of illegal mining did not only affect the production at KCM but the whole country because most of the revenue was going to waste.

And Chingola District Commissioner George Sichula said illegal mining activities had increased not only at KCM but in most mines and that they was need for Government to intervene and help find solutions to ending illegal activities in mines.

Mr Sichula said when toured the open pit that there was need to involve various stakeholders when coming up with plans on how to end illegal activities at the mine.

“We have since written to the Commissioner of police to assist us in finding out what’s causing all these illegal mining activities and she said she would come to our aid this week,” Mr Sichula said.

He said there was need to harden the punishment for people who would be found engaging in illegal mining saying that the current punishment which was six months imprisonment was not adequate to stop illegal activities from taking place.

The Government has suspended the implementation of the e-voucher system that was supposed to be used for small-scale farmers in accessing subsidised inputs under the Farmer Inputs Support Programme (FISP) due to inadequate logistics.

Government also said it has been overstretched because of other pressing needs but assured that every farmer would be paid by the end of this month.

Agriculture and Livestock Minister Bob Sichinga was at pains to explain the prolonged delay by the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) in paying farmers that had delivered their maize in the crop marketing season.This was during the launch of the ZNFU Lima scheme in Kabwe on Wedensday.

This followed ZNFU president Jervis Zimba and Chisamba District Commissioner Ferdinand Chipindi’s queries on when the farmers would be paid for their maize to enable them buy inputs for the 2013/14 farming season.

Mr Sichinga noted that the government had been overstretched because other pressing needs but assured that every farmer would be paid by the end of this month.

[pullquote]it was not possible to implement the e-voucher system because even the ministry did not even have computers[/pullquote]

In March this year Government said it would introduce the E voucher system to enable 241,000 small scale farmers access farming inputs.The Zambia National Farmers union welcomed this move as it would save government resources by eliminating procurement, transportation and other administrative costs associated with FISP administration

In September Agriculture and Livestock Minister Bob Sichinga also told Parliament that the ministry had advertised for the development of the E-Voucher system and the contract would be signed before the end of October, and the process would be completed in December.

However the Agriculture and Livestock Minister has now announced that the e-voucher,electronic system which was set to be piloted in 10 districts this year, needed proper preparations by the government and private
suppliers before being implemented.The government had announced last year that it would use the electronic system for distribution of part of the subsidised inputs under the FISP as a pilot programme to replace the current scheme which benefits 900,000 small scale farmers.

About 241,000 out of the 900,000 under the FISP were expected to be covered by the electronic system before rolling out the programme to the whole country.

The e-voucher system requires that private agro business houses have electronic register of the 241,000 farmers as well as electronic voucher while farmers needed to have either a phone or a computer.

It also required that at the Ministry of Agriculture created a redemption fund which would be recovered by the private suppliers once the farmers acquired the inputs in their respective districts.

“I have a computer background and when I looked at what had been prepared, I was not satisfied that we had a register of the 241,000 famers. I was not satisfied that each of the targeted district had telephone communication to send messages.

“I was also not satisfied that there was sufficient capacity to reach all the 241,000 farmers and because of this, it was not possible to implement the e-voucher system because even the ministry did not even have computers,” Mr Sichinga said.

Mr Sichinga said apart from the necessary logistics the electronic system would have required that all stakeholders involved including the private suppliers be trained on how to handle the programme.

He however assured that his Ministry was keen to implement the electronic system once all the necessary logistics and training had been done.

GOVERNMENT has continued to receive maize export orders from neighbouring countries with over 80,000 metric tonnes already exported to Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and World Food Programme have expressed interest in importing maize from Zambia, which produced over 2.53 million in 2012/13.

Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Robert Sichinga said over 14,000 tonnes have been exported to Zimbabwe, which requires 150,000tonnes of maize while 60,000 tonnes were distributed to Tanzania.

“We also had a requirement from Malawi with 130,000 tonnes, which we expect to export in December. World Food Programme had a requirement of 100,000 metric tonnes as well,” he said.

Mr Sichinga said in an interview on Wednesday in Kabwe.

Burundi has requested 40,000 metric tonnes while the requirement for DRC, which he did not disclose, has also been exported.

Government is exporting the commodity as there is need to clear stocks produced last year and create space for this year’s new crop.

“Instead of exporting individually, we would not know how much has gone outside the country. In order for us not to prejudice our own food security, we only needed to export the excess that we did not need,” he said.

He said currently, the country is consuming a monthly allocation of about 100,000 tonnes (1.2 million tonnes annually).

“In the situation where we have produced maize, we want to make sure that what is purchased by various firms that are producing mealie-meal together with strategic stock at least we have 1.2 million metric tonne plus 500,000 metric tonnes of maize which is a fall-back,” he said.

Meanwhile, Government has so far purchased 417,000 metric tonnes through the Food Reserve Agency out of the 500,000 tonnes earmarked for the programme.

He said Government will soon complete buying the remaining quantity.

MMD Mafinga member of parliament Catherine Namugala says Zambian leaders have not served the people well.

And Namugala said that the PF government had failed to address the high levels of poverty among the poor majority because it has forgotten about the people who voted them into government.

Contributing to the Presidential speech in Parliament yesterday Namugala said that Zambian leaders were irresponsible collectively.

“We are irresponsible leaders; we have allowed foreigners to get land because we are not thinking about our future generation. Now is the time for us to correct what we all know is wrong. As leaders we have not served them (people) well, we have not served them well because even the little space they occupy at the market is being taken over by foreigners. We have forgotten about the people who elected us into government,” said Namugala.

She said that the Patriotic Front in government had been talking about achievements in the past two years which includes the Eurobond and the link 8000 project, which she said was not enough for a government that campaigned and formed government on the premise of poverty reduction.

Namugala said that the PF was failing, adding that it was only fair that its leadership admits its failures as a result of not having the capacity to manage projects being financed by the Eurobond.

“That PF government must admit that there is no capacity to manage the Eurobond so as to create economic value to benefit the people of Zambia. It is sad that we as a nation can borrow and fail to fully utilise a loan which is an opportunity to impact poverty facing our people,” she said.

She said that it did not make sense for the people of Zambia to continue living in abject poverty years after independence, adding that the over dependency on minerals was no longer sustainable for the nation’s economic development.

“The PF has a duty to ensure that Zambians do not continue living in squirrel not now and not in the next 40 years to come. We need to put resources towards sector that can help to grow the country’s Growth Domestic Product (GDP).

She challenged the PF in government to ask themselves what achievements they can account for in the past two years of being in power and how they have impacted the livelihoods of poor Zambians.
And Namugala said that Zambians were living in greater poverty now than they did under the MMD government.

“Have you forgotten about them, have you forgotten that because you have broken your promises the people have no faith in political leadership? Our people are living in worse poverty than they did before you took office, our people in Mafinga are proud that they did not vote for PF,” said Namugala.

She said that the biggest challenge of the PF had been listening to the people of Zambia, “The greatest beneficiaries for good leadership are the people of Zambia. Therefore the PF must listen to what we are saying because we are in contact with the people when you are their being trapped by the benefits of power.

And we want to remind them about the promises they have broken, the PF promised that they would ensure equity in the distribution of land which they have not done.”