WE FIND it extremely shocking and insulting to hear President Edgar Lungu boasting that Zambian people are living well at a time when our citizens are struggling to put food on the table, says UPND secretary general Batuke Imenda.
While opening the Munali flyover on Wednesday, President Lungu said while people say Zambia’s economy is not booming, there are activities which indicate that there is money in the economy and that people are living well.
But Imenda yesterday wondered in which country President Lungu and his Patriotic Front supporters live for them to be blind to the daily toils of the people.
“Is it not laughable that the whole Head of State can measure the people’s standard of living in the country by the congestion he sees on Lusaka roads? It appears that from where Mr Lungu stands, Zambia begins and ends in Lusaka, hence the construction of fly-over bridges whose sub-contracted jobs have been given to PF members,” Imenda said in a statement. “These PF members are the ones flashing millions of kwacha, building mansions and buying expensive cars to drive on the expensive roads constructed from borrowed money. From this narrow perspective of rich PF members, Mr Lungu has the audacity to insult the Zambian people by saying they are all living well! If the Zambian people were enjoying, as Mr Lungu would like to make us believe, would he be demeaning the hardworking miners of this country by lending them Edgar Lungu-branded mealie-meal towards elections?”
Imenda said President Lungu’s desperate action to become ‘Father Christmas’ to the suffering miners was admission enough that his government had not done enough to ensure people afford to put food on their tables without depending on borrowed PF mealie-meal.
“If Mr Lungu were so caring for the miners, why has he not given them the mealie-meal for free?
Why should the money be deducted from the meagre salaries of these miners who cannot even afford to pay school fees for their children because of a depressed economy made worse by the PF’s appetite for borrowing?” Imenda asked. “As the United Party for National Development (UPND), we want to challenge Mr Lungu to visit the Copperbelt a day after the miners get paid and monitor how frequently people visit automated teller machines -ATMs. The people have no money in their accounts. Are these the people Mr Lungu is saying are living well?”
Imenda said President Lungu and the PF were detached from reality and “this is reason enough for the Zambian people to remove this insensitive administration from office come August 12”.
He said Zambia deserves a more caring team of leaders that know the suffering they were going through and will not pretend that they were living well.
“This is where we, as the UPND and president Hakainde Hichilema, come in as an alternative to an insensitive regime whose measure of the Zambian people’s worth is by the millions lining the pockets of a few PF members,” he said.
However, Imenda said the UPND were alive to the fact that not all PF members were enjoying from the loot that had been restricted to a select few who were close to the corridors of power.
He said President Lungu’s statement had even upset his own PF members who were not benefitting from the money being amassed by a few PF members.
“We appeal to these orphaned PF members to look no further; hope and help is on the way. The UPND will not discriminate when it comes to the sharing of the national cake because Zambia belongs to all of us regardless of political party affiliation, ethnicity, race or religion,” Imenda said. “Part of the reason Mr Lungu has seen congestion on Lusaka roads is that the national cake has not been evenly distributed, forcing the marginalised citizens to flood the national capital in search of various services. Instead of spending money to procure drugs for health facilities in the various parts of the country, the PF regime has focused on putting up over-inflated infrastructure. As a result, the people who cannot access quality healthcare outside Lusaka have to travel long distances in search of life-saving drugs, leading to congestion on Lusaka roads.”
Imenda said it was shocking that President Lungu interprets the congestion as a sign of Zambians living well.
“We urge the Zambian people to vote wisely because retaining this blind PF regime would lead to irreparable disaster,” warned Imenda.