Compensations under UPND is white collar plunder – Kasandwe

Compensations under UPND is white collar plunder – Kasandwe

By Thomas Ngala

BANGWEULU PF member of parliament Anthony Kasandwe has labelled the compensations taking place under the UPND government through consent judgments as white collar plunder of public resources.

But Vice-President Mutale Nalumango argued that “there is nothing fraudulent. There is nothing like plunder”.

Kasandwe claimed that he understood how methodical and meticulous the UPND government is.

He said this could be seen in the manner that the people handling the consent judgments were appointed.

“The people of Bangweulu are worried and concerned about the growing trend of meticulous white collar plunder of public resources through consent judgments. Of late we have seen that a number of people have been awarded huge sums of money deflating the government’s needed resources,” said Kasandwe during the Vice-President’s Question Time in parliament on Friday. “My question is…now I understand how methodical and meticulous UPND is. This can be seen in a manner that the people handling this matter were appointed just to clear the ground for plundering natural resources and public resources. Madam Vice-President, why is it that only persons connected to UPND are the ones who are being awarded through questionable consent judgments?”

In her response, Vice-President Nalumango argued that the compensations are not white collar plunder as labelled by Kasandwe.

“I would like to thank the honourable member for Bangweulu who comes out with a lot of passion on the awarding of compensation for people that were wrongly detained. There is nothing fraudulent. There is nothing like plunder,” she said. “It is important to see whether the law is being followed. The law is being followed so you can’t say questionable compensation. There is nothing like that. And this is not targeted at one group or the other. Anybody can go on and bring a matter before the courts and indeed if there was something, infringement on somebody’s rights, they should be able to be compensated.”

She added that compensation is a right to every Zambian.

“That is why as government you must be careful, including today, yesterday… if today we are going to have people wrongly jailed, definitely… but those things that were done under our colleagues [the PF regime]. We should have been careful then that people should not be incarcerated, detained for no cause,” said Vice-President Nalumango. “This is a right to every Zambian and the right must be looked after. One of the important things is that the individual rights must be protected. And if you detain a person wrongly, wrongful detention, you will definitely have them compensated. As a government you must be careful and that is what lacked in the previous regime.”