By Daily Revelation reporter
Republican President Hakainde Hichilema says no one coming outside the constituency will be given contract to do works.
And President Hichilema said he does not subscribe to the notion of being hero-worshiped.
Responding to questions from the media before departure to the United Kingdom last evening, President Hichilema said time to allow outsiders building ‘small toilets’ in constituencies at the expense of the local people was no more.
He said his New Dawn government will be awarding contracts to local people in respective constituencies.
“No one will be given a job in Mufulira (Constituency) who comes from Lusaka; no one will be given a contract to do works in Chingola who comes in Lusaka. Contracts will be given to people within Chingola, and the money will circulate there,” President Hichilema explained emphatically.
“Procurement of goods and services to be funded by Constituency Development Fund (CDF), by and large will be sourced from the constituency. If the constituency doesn’t have the capacity, the district will be involved. Over the years we have been seeing foreigners constructing a small toilet in a constituency, that’s a joke. All those will be things of the past.”
He said through the ministry of science and technology a lot of skills would be created, nurtured in order to build capacity at all levels of development.
The President assured Zambians that he and his team mean business and are determined to not only develop the country, but also unity everyone across the country and beyond.
“We are confident, we know what is happening. Be a participant. I wish to invite all Zambians to work together. That’s why we are talking about unity, we want to unite our country; we work together in the development agenda,” he added.
On implementation of the 2022 budget, the President explained: “As the budget will be debated in parliament, we will be working towards putting the ropes, putting the anchors to ensure effective implementation of the budget. We are also working to ensuring that not just effective implementation, but also putting monitoring and control measures that will be able to check whether the money is spent for the intended purpose. This is the first UPND (Alliance) budget, we walking the talk. All constituencies that have been allocated this money will have to tell us how they will spend this money between now and December (2022). We will provide them with guidance so that they can work and on the side-lines of the constituency budget, we should involve not only the elected members of parliament (and) councillors, we should (also) involve other members of the community…down to the wards: chiefs, church leaders to be part of the budget planning and utilisation of the money. That’s one group. The other group is the monitoring and implementation. Capacity and jobs will be created. And what’s more important is (that) the money (will be) circulating in the constituencies.”
And President Hichilema told those who wanted to kneel before him to offer greetings not to do so because he was not a Messiah. He noted that only God should be knelt for. “I don’t want anyone to kneel before me. We only kneel before God, please take our seats,” the President told those in the habit of kneeling before the Head of State.”
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