Law will soon catch up with several
former ministers, warns Bwalya
By Kombe Mataka
ANTHONY Bwalya says the law will soon catch up with several former ministers that awarded themselves contracts, paid themselves and delivered nothing.
Featuring on Hot Seat Programme yesterday, President Hakainde Hichilema’s spokesperson said the new dawn administration’s fight against corruption was for the basic human rights of the people.
“Those less privileged in our our midst. I am going to repeat this. So those who were corrupt under the previous regime and those who think they can be corrupt under this regime as well as those who think they can be corrupt in the future, the fight against corruption is a fight for basic human rights of those less privileged amongst us and I will explain it,” he said. “When we recovered K65 million as proceeds of crime, we diverted it to supporting over 2,000 young students from under privileged backgrounds who otherwise today would have been on the streets. This is what corruption does. It gets into the pockets of the few and takes away opportunities from as many as 2,000 young men and women.”
Bwalya cited the case of the FTJ (Frederick Titus Jacob) University, where it’s alleged US $33 million was paid to contractors when no works equivalent to the sum had been done.
“The US $33 million was spent to build a project where nothing was done. That is people’s money. They are busy making noise around. They come here, they go everywhere taunting the government, taunting the President and taunting you the Zambian people about how not so corrupt they were. When the President said money was being paid to people, to contractors for providing nothing, people thought was a joker,” said Bwalya.
“Now we have FTJ there, everybody is seeing it. US $33 million! Now they are making noise again, they are saying ‘money was not paid to ourselves’. That thing was under their watch. How do you pay a contractor money when nothing has been done? The buck stops at the leadership. They know nothing was done and it was not an accident but that they intended it to be executed that way. …several ministers of the previous government the law will catch up with them very soon. They paid themselves, they awarded themselves contracts, and they did nothing. This information is known to the law enforcement agencies and they are going to move in at an appropriate time. This is not court of public opinion. We all know that the $33 million was paid.”