HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEKLY PRESS BRIEFING HELD BY THE MINISTER OF INFORMATION AND MEDIA, HON CORNELIUS MWEETWA
Today, the Minister of Information and Media Hon. Cornelius Mweetwa held his weekly Government-Media engagement to discuss matters of national interest in Livingstone, Southern Province.
Below are the highlights
✅ Government has expressed gratitude to all the women who participated in yesterday’s peaceful and successful celebration which is consistent with the New Dawn Administration stance of upholding order and achieving national peace.
✅The Minister also commended Women from all political parties that participated in the International Women’s Day celebration yesterday.
✅ Government understands how crucial peace is to the harmonious coexistence of stakeholders, citizens, and the advancement of democracy in the nation.
✅ The Minister encouraged everyone to imitate the harmony that was seen during yesterday’s International Women’s Day celebration as the country celebrates Youth Day on 12th March, 2024.
✅ Nonetheless, government is aware that International Women’s Day was observed in the middle of the drought, which is a national disaster. The national disaster is a natural occurrence and not something that is solely human-caused.
✅ Government will in the next few days conduct a maize harvest focus which will inform the nation the extent to which the disaster has damaged what could have been un- precedented bumper harvest.
✅ The Minister observed that government has put in place a number of response measures to mitigate the disaster among them :
1. Re- alignment of the budget and channelling more resources towards humanitarian relief interventions.
2. Commercial farmers to venture into contract farming to produce winter maize.
3. The Defence Forces to upscale the production of maize to mitigate the drought situation
4. Government through the Committee of Ministers on Disaster Management led by the Vice President and through Cabinet agreed to introduce a tax waiver on irrigation equipment that has to be imported in the country immediately.
5. Engaging local and international partners to offer support in whatever form available to provide the needed relief.
✅ The government will target water bodies that are unaffected for irrigation despite claims on social media that irrigation will not be possible due to the drought.
✅ The Government of Republic of Tanzania has officially communicated to Zambian Government of its availability to export maize to Zambia.
✅ The Republic of Uganda has also indicated that it has produced sufficient maize which it is willing and ready to export to the Republic of Zambia.
✅ However, the Minister indicted that the importation of maize from other countries will only happen after the Food Reserve Agency ( FRA) mops up all the locally produced maize to ensure that government’s money rotates within the local economy.
✅ The Minister indicated that, the New Dawn Administration sold the maize from the previous harvest which was in stock because maize has a limited life span.
Energy/Electricity Status
✅ According to current statistics, only 20% of water is being posted into the Kariba Dam for power generation. Therefore, Government is urging households and farmers to adopt alternate power sources like solar electricity.
Forex
✅ The Minister noted that the foreign exchange rate will stabilise when the capacity to produce and export becomes stable.
Good Governance
✅ Mr. Mweetwa said the Transparency International of Zambia (TIZ) study showing that corruption has declined under the New Dawn Administration is accurate.
✅ He has urged people who claim that the TIZ’s statistics on corruption during the New Dawn Administration are untrue to confront the organization, arguing that their claims are based only on vacuous political rhetoric rather than actual data.
Agribusiness
✅ Government has placed a ban on the exportation of feed of any description to whose ingredients emanate from maize
In the next few days, Government through the Ministry of Information and Media, Ministry of Agriculture and Defence wings will be visiting selected FRA maize storages in order to ascertain the current levels of maize stocks in the nation. The team will also visit some areas that have been affected by drought.
✅The Minister has assured the nation that government is working round the clock to ensure that citizens have enough food saying there should be no panic buying of maize.
©️ Ministry of Information and Media – Zambia