VICE President GEORGE KUNDA has challenged councils in the country to stop allocating land in areas which easily get flooded.

Mr. KUNDA says the current problems of flooding in KUKU compound and surrounding areas in Lusaka have a lot to do with planning at Lusaka City Council.

The Vice President was speaking shortly after he conducted an on the spot check of houses that have been submerged in Kuku compound after flooding of Ngwenya dam.

And Mr. KUNDA, who also checked on the Independence stadium site where affected families have been re-located, said cabinet will soon meet to find a lasting solution to the problems of floods.

[pullquote]Mr. KUNDA says the current problems of flooding in KUKU compound and surrounding areas in Lusaka have a lot to do with planning at Lusaka City Council.[/pullquote]

He told Journalists that government is determined to find a permanent solution to the problem.

Mr. KUNDA further said that he is impressed that families that have been relocated are living under safe and good sanitary conditions.

Earlier, Red Cross Society of ZAMBIA General Secretary CHARLES MUSHITU dispelled as untrue assertions that Cholera has broken out at the camp site.

And Lusaka District Commissioner CHRISTAH KALULU said the ZAMBIA Army has positioned itself to mount more tents at the site in anticipation of more families who are eager to relocate.

Over 130 families have already been re-located to the camp site.

ZNBC

Kabwe Mine hospital has temporarily closed the out patient department and all patients are being referred to Kabwe General Hospital following the flood situation that has affected the
institution.

And District Disaster Management and Mitigation Committee (KDDMMC) in Kabwe has started evacuating families of flood victims from Kasanda and Makululu compounds to safer places.

A medical officer from Mine hospital Sylvester Kasonde disclosed during disaster management meeting in the office of the district commissioner Jonathan Kapungwe that the hospital authority had no option but to close the department temporarily.

Dr. Kasonde said operations from the second block that houses the dental, mother to child health (MCH), physiotherapy and the HIV information centre have also been halted due to water levels that have risen due to heavy rains over the weekend.

He said all patients would now be referred to Kabwe General hospital for attention while operations in the main hospital would run normally.

And more than 25 families from Kasanda mine security and Makululu areas have opted to be evacuated because the water level was steadily rising while some of it was springing from underground in some houses soaking property including foodstuffs.

Mr. Kapungwe said the affected families would be taken to Kabwe Municipal Council halls at Bwacha, Chimanimani and the hall in town.

He explained that evacuation exercise has already started with the council and the Zambia National Service (ZNS) involved in the movement of the affected families.

In Makululu over five houses have collapsed while in some cases thieves took advantage and stole property from Priscila kalunga’s collapsed structures as she took refuge from the neighbours last night.

With elephant poaching on the rise, a United Nations-sponsored conservation group on Monday rejected a bid by Tanzania to ease a ban on international ivory sales to permit a one-off sale of some 90 tons of its stocks. A separate effort by Zambia to secure a future relaxation of the prohibition was also turned down.

Conservationists in the United States, Europe and other parts of Africa had argued that Tanzania had not combated poaching of elephants and the illegal ivory trade, but Tanzanian officials said the elephant population in their country had more than doubled in recent years to 137,000 in 2006 from 55,000 in 1989.

The sale would have been worth some $20 million.

Zambia had also been seeking permission to hold a sale of more than 21 tons of its ivory stocks, arguing that its elephant population of 27,000 was “steadily increasing.” But after the Tanzanian bid was rejected, Zambia withdrew its proposal, The Associated Press reported, in hopes of winning approval for eventual sales in the future.

Despite support from the United States and some European countries, the Zambian plan was opposed by most African nations, The A.P. said.

The illegal ivory trade is a fraught issue among conservationists. Since 1989, the international trade has been outlawed by the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known by its acronym, Cites, which is meeting in Doha, Qatar, to debate an array of animal conservation issues related to endangered species.

The rejection of the Tanzanian and Zambian proposals represented a rare victory for conservationists at the Doha meeting. Last week, delegates soundly defeated American-supported plans to ban international trade in bluefin tuna and to protect polar bears. Since 1989, Cites, based in Geneva, has permitted occasional one-off sales of stocks of tusks captured from poachers or taken from animals that died of natural causes.

Some African countries, including Kenya and Mali, have maintained that any legalization of the ivory trade leads to renewed poaching by organized gangs who sell illicit ivory goods principally in China. International conservation groups have also opposed an easing of the ban.

“To permit any step towards further trade in ivory makes no sense whatsoever,” said Jason Bell-Leask of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in a statement before the Doha meeting. “It flies in the face of every basic conservation principle.”

Southern Tanzania, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said, “has been a poaching hot spot for the past few years.”

Carlos Drew, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, said after Monday’s decision: “Governments made the right decision by rejecting Tanzania’s proposals. It is not the right time to be approving ivory sales due to increased elephant poaching in central and western Africa,” The A.P. reported.

But other groups maintain there is no evidence of a link between one-off sales and poaching.

In its proposal for an easing of the ban, Tanzania said its plan “aims at promoting sustainable conservation of the elephant population” by reinvestment of profits from a one-off sale in wildlife conservation and in support for “development activities of communities living within the elephant ecosystems.”

“Rural people do not tolerate the presence of elephants unless the costs of living with elephants can be offset by economic benefits derived from elephants,” the proposal said.

The Zambian proposal echoed the Tanzanian argument, saying “the primary risk to the long-term survival of the elephant in Zambia is not international trade but increasing conflicts with legitimate human interests such as agriculture as shown by the rising number of human-elephant conflicts.”

“The Zambian government by law owes it to the rural communities to conserve and to benefit from wildlife resources in a serious partnership,” the proposal said. “Situations where human beings rise against the elephant due to rising incidences of crop damage, injury and worse still loss of human life cannot be tolerated in an era where various sustainable use options for intervention exist” in other southern African countries.

[NYT]

THE Government is working towards turning Zambia into an information and communications technology (ICT) hub in the region, Communication and Transport Minister Geoffrey Lungwangwa has said.

Professor Lungwangwa said during the 10th infopoverty world conference in New York, United States of America (USA), that the Government had set some objectives to meet the target.

The objectives include a commitment to improving infrastructure for ICT through the development of the optic fibre infrastructure backbone to facilitate internet broadband connectivity through the establishment of community telecentres, particularly in rural areas.

This is according to a statement released by first secretary for Press at the Zambian embassy in New York, Moses Walubita.

Prof Lungwangwa said to achieve the target, the Government intended to invest in human resource development to ensure universal access to ICT services such as internet and mobile phones, which would in turn facilitate the country’s achievements of the millennium development goals.

He said the Government’s policy was to use private investment in expanding access to this crucial catalyst for development.

Prof Lungwangwa said Zambia was committed to the development of the ICT sector and the Government was in the process of privatising Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel) to ensure that other actors had access to the international gateway to facilitate affordable ICT services in Zambia.

Due to the current cost of delivery, just about one per cent of Zambians have access to the internet and 30 per cent have access to the mobile services, a situation that should improve with the privatisation of the sector because more people, particularly rural communities, will be engaged in income-generating activities resulting from increased access to ICT services.

Prof Lungwangwa said Government had adopted an ICT policy to provide a framework for the provision of these essential services to the nation and was, therefore, encouraging investment in the ICT sector, especially in the rural areas.

In a round-table discussion on how to institutionalise ICT for development in aid strategies and policies, he said the Zambian Government was determined to increase internet and mobile services from the current levels of 57 per cent to 100 per cent by 2015.

He said President Rupiah Banda who was invited by the organisers could not attend due to other national duties.

The conference was organised by OCCAM with the European Parliament, United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development, Infopoverty Institute at the University of Oklahoma in USA, and the Provincia di Milano in Italy.

[Times of Zambia]

THE flood situation in Lusaka has worsened, with about 70 houses in New Kuku Township getting submerged in water.

According to a Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) report monitored last evening, the township got overwhelmed by water after Ngwenya Dam burst its banks.

The township has also plunged into darkness after electricity supply was disturbed.
Some residents said they were suffering and their children could not even attend school as a result of the floods.

According to the report, some residents had found business opportunities in the situation and embarked on fishing.
They said they were selling the fish from the dam.

But despite the floods, the residents were refusing to relocate to the temporary site near Independence Stadium.

Lusaka District Commissioner Christah Kalulu said the Government was not draining water from Kamwala South into Ngwenya Dam.

Ms Kalulu, who is also Lusaka District Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit chairperson, said the Government was draining water from Kamwala South into the main drainage system at the Kamwala shopping centre.

She said the bursting of Ngwenya dam was due to a natural phenomenon.

Ms Kalulu also said claims that the temporary site had recorded some cholera cases were not true.

She said Government had put in place adequate measures to prevent any waterborne diseases at the site.

[Times of Zambia]