A Begging Bowl, an embarrassing gesture- Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba

We face an economic shut-down- President Hichilema

A Begging Bowl, an embarrassing gesture

Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba wrote;

President Hakainde Hichilema has
urged the World Bank Group to take necessary decisions and steps to help Zambia avoid going into an economic shutdown.

President Hichilema said there was urgent  need for the World Bank Group to make a decision on the Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) so as to help Zambia avoid an economic shutdown.

The Cat DDO is a contingent credit line that provides immediate liquidity to International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) member countries in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Hichilema has also earlier requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to increase  the Extended Credit Facility bail-out from $1.3billion to $1.7billion.

But Hichilema has failed to take responsibility for his own failures and has refused to take action against the criminal negligence of his appointed officials at ZESCO and Ministry of Agriculture.

ZESCO’S NEGLIGENCE

Despite repeated expert warning of reduced water in Kariba, ZESCO kept on exporting large quantities of power and exhausted Water allocation for 2024 in  June 2024

The Zambezi River Authority announced that it had allocated 16 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM) of water to be shared equally between ZESCO Limited (ZESCO) and Kariba Hydro Power Company (KHPC) for their power generation operations at Kariba for the year 2024.

The 2024 water allocation was informed by the 2023/2024 rainfall forecasts made by the Southern Africa Climate Outlook Forum-27 (SARCOF-27), Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS-NET) and the corresponding downscaled projections by the National Metrological Agencies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, which showed reduced rainfall for catchment areas feeding Zambezi river and Lake Kariba.

This adverse outlook was highly influenced by the increasing occurrence of El Niño weather which would significantly impact negatively, the rainfall season in Southern Africa.

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE NEGLIGENCE

Similarly, despite these warning of the impact of the El Nino weather effect, the Zambian Government through the Ministry of Agriculture kept on exporting maize to the region and depleted the national maize strategic reseves.

Now the country is forced to look for fresh resources to buy maize grain to meet the sharp market demand for both human and animal consumption and for mealie-meal which forms part of the nations staple food.

After these careless and dangerous decisions, President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought as national dusaster and emergency and announced that the country was begging for $900 million as the drought had devastating consequences on many critical sectors such as agriculture, water availability and energy supply, risking national food security and livelihoods of millions of Zambians.

ABANDONING DOMESTIC RESOURCES CHOOSING TO BEG

President Hichilema’s government has granted tax concessions and incentives to the mines.

He has abandoned a process for ZCCM-IH to recover $2.5billion stolen from Kansanshi Copper and Gold Mine.

He allowed externalisation of resources in illicit flows to tax havens and offshore accounts abroad as investiagted by the Financial Intelligence Centre.

He has abandoned the fight against corruption and allowed the Treasury to be pillaged.

He has increased efforts to beg for international grants and  loans.