By Isaac Zulu
Chama North member of parliament Yotam Mtayachalo has said that it is a waste of resources to allocate K150 million to go towards operations of foreign missions.
Commenting on the decision by the UPND government to present a K22 billion supplementary budget to Parliament for approval recently, which subsequently saw parliamentarians from both the ruling party and opposition approving the said budget, Mtayachalo charged that it is wasteful to spend K150 million of the supplementary budget on embassies, which he said “are not productive and do not deserve such an allocation.”
He said it would have been prudent for government to allocate more money to other sectors such as water reticulation and construction of infrastructure for the generation of power.
“And they requested that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs K150 million for foreign services. You can not allocate such an amount of money just to one sector called foreign services. For me, we should be realistic to ourselves and stop wasting such resources on foregn missions when we know very well that Embassies and High Commissions are not productive,” explained Mtayachalo in an interview. “We are told that President Hakainde Hichilema is the chief marketing officer of Zambia at the moment. So I would suggest that we trim the number of embassies to manageable levels, as the President continues traveling outside the country. As things stand, it is a waste of resources to allocate K150 million towards operations of foreign missions.”
He said that universal access to electricity for all citizens by 2030 will remain a pipe dream if the current government does not consider investing in electricity generation.
“We are remaining with eight years from the year 2030, and yet less than 40 per cent of Zambians have access to electricity. Government should have been thinking of allocating more financial resources in infrastructure development for electricity generation,” said Mtayachalo. “Further, majority of our people have no access to clean and safe drinking water. Therefore, these are the sectors that government should be channeling financial resources to.”
Mtayachalo further stated that the UPND administration had underestimated their expenditure in the 2022 national budget, hence their decision to introduce a supplementary budget seven months after the commencement of the operationalization of the national budget.
“One of their justifications was that there were changes in prices of fertiliser owing to the war in Ukraine. And we didn’t want them to say that the Patriot Front members of parliament are undermining the supplementary budget. So we supported them,” said Mtayachalo.
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