By Patson Chilemba
Agriculture minster Mtolo Phiri says Socialist Party (SP) leader Dr Fred M’membe does not have the background information on how the contract for the supply of 50,000 metric tones was awarded by the UPND administration to Alpha Commodities.
But Dr M’membe said the deal stinks of corruption as it had been single sourced and awarded to the husband of a sitting cabinet minister, who also happens to be a close friend of President Hakainde Hichilema.
Responding to Dr M’membe’s assertions, Phiri said he would excuse the SP leader, claiming he did not have the information.
“The first thing that he could have done was to call to say how was it done? You see what we did was this, there were six fertilizer suppliers alright! And out of this six there were only two who had completed on time. The others are still delivering and all sorts of things. And the two were NCZ (Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia) and Alpha Commodities. You understand? NCC and Alpha Commodities. So we called the two,” Phiri told Daily Revelation media.
He said they started with the government institution NCZ to supply 50,000 tones of fertilizer to Southern and Western Province, asking them how much they were able to deliver, and that NCZ said they were only able to deliver 13,000 to the maximum.
“That left us with 37,000 and we said okay, Alpha ‘are you able to supply this’, and they said ‘yes we are able to supply this without problems’. So we merely extended, we were not single sourced. We merely extended the contract for these two suppliers. That’s the bottom line. So who was single sourced? Why are they not talking about NCZ?” Phiri asked. “There are two suppliers who were given the contract and we started with our own.”
Asked if Alpha is owned by the husband to a cabinet minister, Phiri said: “Look, I wouldn’t like to go into that. I don’t know but what I know is that one of the directors there is Dr Jangulo. That I can confirm. So the other aspect I don’t know, if he is the husband to Madam I don’t know. But we are not the ones who contracted Alpha and you know these are the points which should be brought out.
“It is not the new government that appointed Alpha. Alpha was appointed, was one of the six suppliers appointed by the previous government and these are Nyimba, Mberia, Rocklif, ETG, Alpha and NCZ. Why are people devoid of truth? Why?”
He said those who were raising issues simply wanted to sensationalise the whole issue because Alpha was never appointed by the new government but merely extended because they had performed, and that there were records to prove that.
“You are free to come and see the records of how they performed and what the others performed like. Alpha and NCZ performed well and we simply said let’s extend their contract,” Phiri said. “Anyone who is against that let them come and see the records we never contracted Alpha. Never. By the time I was coming Alpha was already in contract with government. We never contracted NCC. By the time we were coming, NCZ were already in contract with the government.”
Asked on the questions stakeholders were raising, not specifically on the two-year contract entered into by the previous government but the new contract entered into by the new UPND government for the supply of 50,000 metric tones, Phiri said the previous arrangement was that Southern, Western and two districts in Lusaka Province were on the e-voucher arrangement, which only allowed farmers to get two bags of fertilizer, while the others were getting 6-bags, with the possibility of an extra 3-bags.
He claimed that was being done to punish people in the affected regions for “not voting properly.”
Put to him that President Hichilema has called as corrupt the deals in the supply of fertilizer in the previous administration, and why the said companies mentioned were maintained, Phiri argued that they were already supplying and therefore the supply could not be stopped.
“These four other companies they are supplying fertilizer because you know, they did not meet the contract arrangement. Yes…we never contracted Alpha as a single source. We picked the best two that supplied. If there were three we were going to pick the three, if there were the four, we were going to break down the four into four. If all the six has done, we were going to break down the six into six,” said Phiri. “Because what are we fighting against? Time! Time!”
Featuring on Hot FM radio recently, Dr M’membe said the fertilizer actions the UPND administration had taken already showed red signs, that they will not be able to fulfill their promise to reduce fertilizer to K250 in the coming year.
“They have recently awarded a contract to a husband of a cabinet minister, to a close friend of the President, single sourced at $1407 per tone. The previous government was buying fertilizer at $1000 per tone. Now it’s being bought from this new friend of government for $1407 single sourced, 37,000 metric tones,” said Dr M’membe. “He is going to reck in super profits of close to $16 million…above the normal profits the industry makes. This is not a recipe for reducing the prices of fertilizer. And also it smells or stinks of corruption. This is corruption. I don’t see any other word that one can use.”
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