Kampyongo mocks HH’s $154m ‘saving’ in fertiliser procurement
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
SHIWANG’ANDU PF member of parliament Stephen Kampyongo says claiming that government saved $154 million from the FISP programme as a result of a clean-up of the procurement process is a like a father saying that he has saved enough money for his soccer sprees after cutting off some meals in his home.
Featuring on 5FM’s Burning Issue programme on Thursday, Kampyongo said President Hakainde Hichilema could not have bragged about saving money from fertiliser procurement because he has not satisfied the demand of the one million farmers which his government earmarked to subsidise.
“When I heard him say that ‘we have saved money from the FISP’, I was like oh my God are we in the same country? Because you cannot say you have saved when people for the first time are sharing fertiliser using what they call Meda. These seed bags that they get are being shared using cups. It is there. So how can you say, you have saved when you have not bought enough to cater for the farmers? That is not saving. You stop your children from eating breakfast, you will just be eating lunch. You won’t also be eating supper, Okay! Then at the end of the month you say I have saved a lot of money, I am able to watch soccer because I saved a lot of money from cutting-off breakfast and supper at home. So there is no saving that we can talk about when we have not satisfied the demand,” he said. “If the demand was satisfied and everyone was saying ‘yes we have received inputs on time and in required quantities’ then we can say we made this saving and we have increased the beneficiaries then you can brag about the saving not when you have not satisfied the demand.”
He said instead of eight bags of fertiliser farmers were getting six.
Kampyongo said PF had feared to wean off farmers which “UPND came and did wantonly”.
“Even Paramount Chief Mpezeni has complained. You have heard. When you go to Mwine Lubemba, it is the same. Even our chiefs in Southern Province are saying the same thing. They (government) even suspended the distribution of farming inputs in Southern Province for some reason. All those are things that will affect farmers negatively,” he noted. “When you inherit systems, you can only better them. You don’t break them and want to start afresh. We attempted to do that. We should be sincere about that, we attempted to do that over this thing of FISP. When we tried to break the supply chain, we were almost finding ourselves in the same problem until a decision to better the programme came.”
Kampyongo said the government must start appreciating other governments.
“If the President can go and appreciate and take his colleague from Rwanda to show the masterpiece (Kazungula Bridge), let us praise each other. UNIP worked and left challenges. MMD worked and left. PF came in and did some work; there are some success stories and challenges remained. Government is a going concern. The UPND will do certain things and certain things won’t be fulfilled,” he said. “There will be no miracles that will happen to say UPND will fix everything. And that goes to all the promises which were made but what is important is to acknowledge each other. ‘Yes you ended here. We are going up there’. Blame games do not put solutions on the table. Never! Because it is like your children are crying for food, and the mother is not around, you cannot say ‘your mother is not there’. You who is there must provide the food because complaining about someone who is not available won’t put food for the children on the table, for the children to stop crying. Yes it is interesting but time for politicking should come to an end.”
Kampyongo said Zambia should emulate Kenya that was advancing its democracy.
“Are you aware that the Kenya President William Ruto, his predecessor [Uhuru] Kenyatta and his competitor in the just-ended election travelled to the US and he (Ruto) said ‘let us grow democracy on the continent’. Because that way, it is easier to interact. Whether we like it or not we only have one former president out of the six we have had since independence. It is only president Edgar Lungu and he has a record of having looked at the predecessors until they died,” said Kampyongo. “He had two of them. Our founding father Dr Kaunda and Mr Rupiah Banda. So for the sake of development and the fact that there will be others coming…yes we have Mr Hakainde Hichilema today, he won’t be the last. So to try and continue apportioning blame will never put solutions on the table.”
