MUNSHEBWA AILE NA MAFI KUMAKO: The Case Of Importation Of White And Yellow Mealie Meal Into Zambia-Harry Kalaba

MUNSHEBWA AILE NA MAFI KUMAKO

• THE CASE OF IMPORTATION OF WHITE AND YELLOW MEALIE MEAL INTO ZAMBIA

I Note with great sadness the advert statement by the Minister of Agriculture indicating that His Excellency the President Mr Hakainde Hichilema has authorized the importation of white and yellow maize in the country.

This is a is a slap on the face of UPND government.
For some of us, it has been three decades when Zambians were lastly fed with yellow maize and nshima to be precise.

From that time successive governments have been the more wiser making strides to ensure there is enough strategic food stocks especially maize in our reserves. Successive governments have always had a forecasting of stocks for a rainy day like this one.

Then come President Hakainde of UPND, the self acclaimed savior of our nation, the most brilliant businessman of all time and the perfect president Zambia needed. For him it was business as usual. The way he got his wealth is the way he continue even as president.

In September 2021, just after UPND formed government, the IPC Acute Food Insecurity analysis issued an analysis report covering the period from July to September 2021, indicating that about 1.18 million people in Zambia were facing high levels of acute food insecurity with 77,938 people being most affected in Luapula, Lusaka and Western provinces.

The UPND may recall that the same analysis projected that the period starting from October 2021 to March 2022, coincides with the lean season when the country’s food security situation is expected to deteriorate, with around 1.58 million people (13% of the analysed population).

It further indicated that for the period of October 2021 to march, 2022, Luapula, Lusaka, North-Western, Northern, Southern and Western provinces had a steep rise in the number of people affected by the ongoing food insecurity, which according to the report was to worsen in the coming months if nothing was done.

Equally, early in 2023, FEWS NET(the Famine Early Warning Systems Network) which monitors and forecasts acute food insecurity, warned about the impending El Niño weather phenomenon that would hit Southern Africa, Zambia, was in the equation for the calamity.

But as usual, it was methodical governance by Mr. Hakainde Hichilema with his inept political followers and the cadres he appointed in institutions of governance.

It is even disheartening to note that the UPND government despite all these warnings, they decided they know better than everyone else and are munshebwas….they continued with their appetite for money, to the extent that huge quantities of maize were exported despite the advices and recommendations from the sub-sector and associated industries not to do so.

They offloaded and depleted the accumulated national strategic maize reserves which was kept in three crop marketing seasons from 2019 to 2021.

Really what kind of government places money before its people? Our citizens are completely food insecure. Let’s hear the bragging boastful president talk a bout the brilliant ways of ensuring good security.

Now, out food insecure citizens require urgent assistance to reduce food gaps, protect and restore livelihoods and prevent acute malnutrition.

The UPND government, should have realized that, successive governments including the PF government then, understood that the projected period and beyond would coincide with the lean season, thereby deteriorating Zambia’s food security situation. And as such, the government then, stored enough maize and expected the prices of mealie meal to remain relatively low in the five-year average.

We are were we are. We have some questions we would like government to address. What is the quantity of quality white maize do we have in the national strategic maize reserves by the Food Reserve Agency? I ask this question because Hon. Mutolo Phiri informed Parliament that as at 1st May, 2023, the total carry-over stocks of maize held by farmers, millers, grain traders and the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) was about 450,891 metric tonnes with expected production of 3,261,686 metric tonnes of maize and that the total stocks of maize at that time was at 3.7million metric tonnes. Ba Zambia twasebana…

We urge the UPND to learn about management of the whole of government, and avoid the total government failure to appropriate and redistribute resources including the mismanagement of the 2022/2023 agricultural season, with poor and chaotic seed and fertiliser importation, and equitable distribution to viable farmers in both the Southern and Northern regions especially that the northern half of the country is where there is more rain, and to never ever repeat the lopsided distributing more inputs in the southern half of the country.

We further urge the Government to call for an indaba on improving food security. Time for methodical guesses is gone and cannot be accepted any more by citizens.

Harry Kalaba
Citizens First President