By Daily Revelation Reporter
FDD leader Edith Nawakwi says it’s unbridled greed and corruption for President Hakainde Hichilema’s companies to be bidding for public contracts, saying she questioned the President’s actions and hoped that he would one day graduate from being “an under-five to under-10” in the manner he operates.
And Nawakwi said the cost of producing a 25kg bag of mealie meal from a 50 kg bag of maize is too expensive, saying fuel and electricity prices must be reduced significantly in order to achieve the K50 price the President promised Zambians.
Calling in to Daily Revelation, Nawakwi said there was nothing to celebrate from the promised reduction in the prices of mealie meal promised to fetch between K160 and K170, following the decision by the FRA to offload 152,000 metric tonnes of maize to some millers countrywide.
She charged that President Hichilema had little interest in the man in “kwa George” who is struggling to raise the K170 to buy mealie meal.
Nawakwi said it is not offloading of maize that will reduce the price of mealie meal in the long run as farmers were not so much into planting maize, plus the poor input season, and therefore the need to incentivize farmers by urging them to plant winter maize in return for reduced taxes on fuel, energy and agricultural equipment.
She said while the poor were struggling to raise money to buy a bag of expensive mealie meal, “President Hichilema and his cohorts were siphoning money through the awarding of contracts to his companies”, saying Aflife has been awarded the contract to be “environmental managers somewhere.”
She said she wondered when Diego Kasili became the new “secretary to cabinet” to be inviting stakeholders to have discussions with the President.
“The price of mealie meal is the least of his interests. Him he eats cake. How does a director at his company represent the interests of the financial sector? That is unbridled greed and corruption. The Bible says shepherds who mistreat their flock will be punished,” Nawakwi said. “Look at the list of people holding the same stakeholders meeting. Is it representative of Zambians? It’s just a kitchen cabinet. Is it because he has toddlers around him that they don’t understand government? How does a serious farmer like Graham Ray feel about being invited by Kasili? Nowonder (late former president) Michael Sata used to call them under-five. Even if they are under-five I think they can grow up to be under-10.”
She accused the President of having lost it, and that he must realize that the same company he keeps with will be the same one to move on and laugh at him as Kasili was once with MMD.
“He has just invited his friends like Muna Hantuba. The complexion of the meeting tells you that the man is not serious. Someone running a filling station is not an expert in the petroleum sector. He puts oliver Saasa as being in mining because he thinks being ZCCM-IH chairman makes you a miner,” charged Nawakwi.
