By Merlyn Mwanza
Ushita mwana wa ndoshi (those who are ungrateful are children of witches), says Vice-President Mutale Nalumango.
Responding to a question in Parliament over a Facebook posting from 2019 by President Hakainde Hichilema then as an opposition leader that the PF was broke and “thus will tax us all to death” saying they could reduce the price of fuel to less than K12 per liter simply by adjusting the input cost elements, Vice-President Nalumango said Zambia was not an island and was being affected by what was happening globally.
She said right now there was no tax on the oil marketing companies, as the fuel price increments were being driven by the effects of the conflict brought about by the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
She said the government would always take care of the people as they were sincere and were not making money out of the system they were leading.
She mentioned some of the achievements she felt the government has achieved, including increased allocation towards the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), free education from Grade 1 – 12 in public schools, and that retirees were being paid, including the increased Social Cash Transfer allocation even to the old women, saying the government needed to be thanked for these achievements.
“Surely Madam Speaker, ushitasha mwana wa ndoshi (which she literally interpreted in English as meaning ‘if you are ungrateful you can only be a child of the witch’),” Vice-President Nalumango said, adding that the government could not clean up everything at the same time, but progressively people will see the change. “…can you say well done to us.”
She said when President Hichilema made the argument about the fuel prices in 2019, the global environment was not the same as it were today and the fuel prices were low, but that now fuel prices in several countries including Nigeria, England and the United States of America, to mention but a few, have gone up.
“There was no war during your time. You just didn’t know how to calculate.” Vice-President Nalumango said, however, the UPND government made the initial fuel price increment from K17 to K21 before it was even known that there would be a war in Ukraine and the prices were lower on the international market.
Vice-President Nalumango also said Zambia could not import fuel from Angola which was a stones throw as it could not process the product from there.
But Chama North member of parliament Yotam Mtayachalo countered that the other countries have maintained or implemented subsidies on fuel in order to lesson hardships on their citizens.
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