HARDSHIP: THE HUNGER IS TOO MUCH FOR ZAMBIANS- Fred M’membe

HARDSHIP: THE HUNGER IS TOO MUCH FOR ZAMBIANS

We urge Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his government to acknowledge the immense hardships currently facing the people and commit towards guaranteeing a practical economic recovery plan, which will significantly improve the standard of living.

We say this because life for the majority of our people is getting extremely desperate. There is no doubt that every new day is presenting fresh and unbearable challenges for the great majority of our people. Lately, the local news on various media platforms is never short of stories about price adjustments. It’s one price increment after another! That is how our people are getting by, but the question is: for how long?

Fuel is unreasonably high, food prices are skyrocketing, loadshedding is at its peak – 12 hours per day, mealie meal is scarce and unfordable for many, water rationing has begun, employee’s salaries are being wiped out by the economic meltdown, and many other challenges. The country is collapsing in our faces. Where is the leadership of Mr Hichilema? Where are the “brilliant ideas” they had before being elected into office? What has happened to the promises Mr Hichilema made?

Mr Hichilema and his government must realise that the honeymoon is over! The boasting and self-praise cannot get the people out of these hardships. It’s time to work. Let him fix the economy, as he had promised, and ease the burden of misery and squalor amongst the people. He needs to fix the cost of living, high fuel and food prices, loadshedding, water rationing and shortages, poor salaries for workers, and many other problems facing the people.

Let him stop running away from the real issues – fixing the economy and fulfilling the promises he made to the people. Let him show commitment to the economic survival of the country and the people. The people are eager to see a president who will make Zambia better and more affordable prices for all. And not a president whose preoccupation is to make things worse. People have suffered enough, and they don’t want a president or government that is an impediment to improved standard of living.

We call upon Mr Hichilema and his government to urgently attend to the many challenges facing the country and create an all-inclusive, fair, and equitable system of governance, which will benefit all Zambians. There is a need for them to restructure the country’s finances to match its priorities and boost the purchasing power of the population, especially the vulnerable to guarantee a trickle- down effect of prosperity.

Life has become unreasonably high and unfair. We urge Mr Hichilema to disengage from the self-serving and posturing leadership he is in, which is premised on self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. These retrogressive traits need to be halted lest we end up worse than we are today.

Enough of the suffering.

Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party