IT’LL BE DONOR GMO IMPORTS…we saw from day one that UPND are going to fail lamentably – Silumbe

IT’LL BE DONOR GMO IMPORTS…we saw from day one that UPND are going to fail lamentably – Silumbe

By Fanny (The Mast)

LEADERSHIP Movement president Richard Silumbe says government’s decision to allow importation of maize is a sign of failure.

He says agriculture minister Mtolo Phiri has done nothing in the sector.

“It will be donor GMO mealie meal coming into this country, which will be very disastrous for us because we believe that GMOs are not good for our country,” he charges.

Dr Silumbe told The Mast in an interview that the UPND government failed the moment they were sworn into office because they did not have a blueprint for development.

Mtolo told ZNBC on Monday that government would by end of this month start importation of 650,000 metric tonnes of maize which will be handed over to the Food Reserve Agency.

In an earlier statement, Mtolo stated that “Following this declaration [of drought as a national disaster and emergency], the Ministry of Agriculture wishes to inform the nation that authority has been granted to import white and yellow non-genetically modified maize grain for both human and industrial consumption for the period April 2024 to April 2025. The Ministry therefore, wishes to encourage citizens to take up this business opportunity by sourcing non-genetically modified white and yellow maize grain…”

But Dr Silumbe said the UPND was not anchored on production.

“From the Leadership Movement point of view that is a sign of failure. We saw from day one that the UPND are going to fail lamentably because number one whatever they came for, whatever the people voted them to come and do in this country, it’s never anchored on production. So in this country any government that will be successful is a government that talks about production. A government that looks at how itself as a government is going to participate in producing enough maize. Producing enough products, enough farm products, so that people are able to eat. Now look at what we are seeing under UPND! Under the UPND there is no production. Under the UPND there is only for foreigners to come and take over everything that we have,” Dr Silumbe said. “This is the reason why they can even order for importation of whatever that can come from outside the country. We need a government that puts Zambians first, that looks at production. Where ZNS (Zambia National Service) becomes productive, where millions of young people are able to get into ZNS, they are able to participate and be able to be productive. Educated or not educated, we need young people’s energy because that is paramount for production.”

He said the imports the new dawn government is referring to would be donations.

“When it comes to mining, we have again allowed foreigners to continue misappropriating our resources. This is what we are seeing from the new dawn government. Where as a sell-out government as usual they are giving out our natural resources. We need ZNS to participate in mining. We need to produce our own copper, our own gold and our own manganese. We need to benefit from these resources. So if we cannot do this, we cannot have state farms for instance under ZNS, we cannot have ZNS run mines and we have a government that does not participate in any production, we expect ourselves to be moving from bad to worse. And these are the symptoms of a failed government. When you hear the Minister of Agriculture who has done nothing in agriculture… they lied that they have given people fertiliser. They never gave people fertiliser. Farmers are languishing in poverty and they did not support the farmers so that they can even undertake irrigation methods of farming. They have not done anything and today they are talking about importation of yellow maize and white [maize] and much of that will be obviously donations,” said Dr Silumbe. “It will be donor GMO mealie meal coming into this country, which will be very disastrous for us because we believe that GMOs are not good for our country. We need to produce our own healthy maize. So this is very detrimental to development. And as Leadership Movement we know that the UPND government failed the moment they were sworn-in office because they did not have a blueprint for development. And the only blue print for development is production. Where a government comes in power knowing that they need to put their young people to work. We need to own our mines. We need to start participating in production with our own Zambian run mine.”