By Staff Reporter
Former Commerce minister Bob Sichinga says Hakainde Hichilema is not interested in relinquishing his board chairperson position at IDC so that he can continue making decisions to benefit himself, charging that he is aware that there was no board meeting which sat to decide the giving up of 20 percent shares in Kansanshi gold and copper mine in exchange for the annual 3.1 percent royalty payments.
Reacting to State House’s position that the President was simply obeying the bad laws by continuing to chair the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the body which oversees all the parastatal institutions in the country, Sichinga insisted against wasting time and answering “boys like (State House Chief Communications Specialist Clayson) Hamasaka” saying the truth of the matter was that President Hichilema knows how corporate governance works.
He wondered why Hichilema could simply not appoint somebody to act if indeed he believes in corporate governance, adding that he could have simply appointed someone to act or changed the law if he were really interested in doing the right thing.
“All it takes is a resolution. The first thing the President would have done is (to say) let’s resolve right now that this position will no longer be occupied by the President. Because remember, IDC is a limited liability company. And at his very first meeting he would have said we are proposing a resolution that the President should no longer be the chairperson of this organisation and also enable him to appoint someone,” Sichinga said. “And at that point in time if he was really serious he would have found somebody else to chair and would have said from now on this individual will act as the law or resolution is being implemented.”
He said President Hichilema has deliberately decided that the law should not be changed “because then he can dictate what he wants. That’s all there is to it.”
“Tell them that honourable Sichinga says you know what the right thing is. You just don’t want to do it,” Sichinga said, and wondering why the same board was not even meeting to deal with the issues they are supposed to handle. “Quote me! I am aware that the board itself as a whole did not resolve on FQM. There was no such meeting to resolve that. They did not. To say that the board approved the sell of the shares is incorrect. There was nobody. I am aware of that. Some of the board members have told me ‘we never had a meeting, we just heard that the shares had been sold.’ Now you are talking about the board of the IDC. If that’s how he wants to run why does he have a board at all? Just remove the board.”
Sichinga argued that the President could not decide on the sell or conversation of shares because by law he was not the holder of shares on behalf of the country but the minister of Finance.
“So if the President wants to be methodical about it as he says he should just follow the right way,” Sichinga said. “The truth of the matter is he does not want to do it because then he can make decisions in his capacity as chairman of the board and says this is the board decision.”
Sichinga said it was in Hichilema’s interest, given that he was following up alleged corruption in the PF administration like at Ministry of Finance, which he said was right, and should therefore take keen interest himself and his administration to live above board.
“Indeed PF did many silly things, they were involved in corruption. There is no question about it,” he said, but warned that the President and those in UPND will also be followed up in future, saying the same question he was posing to his predecessor Edgar Lungu about “what does the law say” will also be the same question posed to him by his successors.
He said that people voted out PF because they wanted the UPND to correct the mess and not to start indulging in the same filth.
Sichinga further questioned why Authur Ndlovu and Nitesh Patel were removed from the IDC board, and also questioned which board sat to select the CEO of IDC and the ZCCM-IH CEO.
“Show us the panel of that board. We want you to be transparent because you see … in government there is no secret. The right thing to do is just to be transparent. That’s all,” he said.
He further questioned why the government was not addressing Mopani in which government has a 100 percent stake, asking what the production was this year as compared to the other years, as what the company requires is the investment which could simply by attained by allowing ZCCM-IH to go and borrow against the iron ore in the ground.
Sichinga said the same information they give to private entities about the ore which they use to borrow money could be used to borrow by ZCCM-IH.
“My suspicion is that they are reserving that for their friends. That’s my suspicion that they are reserving that for their favourite. They can talk about the issue of Vedanta that the issue is in court but they are discussing now. How are they discussing if the matter is in court?” Sichinga asked, adding that Vedanta failed to fulfill the contents of the development agreement and argued that they do not even have sufficient money and want to use the ore content to go to the market and borrow so that Arghawal can continue to make profit over “Zambians heads.”
He wondered where the administration would get the revenues for forex if they could not properly empower Zambia to own its own resources and use them profitably for the country’s benefit.
“So where will you get the money to pay for free education, free meals for the students, to fix the roads, and to develop the mines? Where will you get the foreign currency to pay for the medicines because you have given it away? Where will revenue for increased CDF come from?” asked Sichinga.
