PF IS a cabal of schemers who are always plotting on how to plunder public resources to enrich themselves instead of finding solutions to the problems the country is facing, says Jack Kalala.
Kalala says the decision to hire a consulting firm to restructure Zambia’s debts is an admission of failure to run the economic affairs of the country.
The former special assistant to president Levy Mwanawasa for project implementation & monitoring said PF leaders use their positions in government and the party for their personal benefit.
“They have no feelings for the country and the people. They recklessly borrowed millions of dollars to spend on excessively inflated megaprojects and purchases of little value to the economy of the country. They spend millions of dollars on roads, ambulances and used fire tender engines at inflated prices. The President bought himself a state of the art luxury jet to allow him stretch his legs during his numerous aimless travels across the globe,” Kalala said in a statement. “They want to spend $5 million dollars on hiring a consultant to tell them on how to repay the loans they borrowed to squander and steal but they cannot find $3 million dollars to set up a gold processing refinery that would raise money to repay the loans and to spend on developing the country.”
He noted that mines minister Richard Musukwa confirmed that there were substantial volumes of gold in Kasenseli in North-Western Province that could help to pay off the debts, fight poverty, create wealth for the country and build on reserves.
“Yet they want to hire consultants to tell them how to repay the loans that they have recklessly accumulated since 2011. The decision to hire a consulting firm to restructure the debts is an admission of failure to run the economic affairs of the country. It is also an admission of lack of capacity. It shows that when they were contracting the loans they did not have a plan on how to repay the debts. Now that the time has come to repay the loans they want someone to tell them how to go about it. It is absurd!” Kalala said.
“In addition to lacking capacity, the hiring of consultants to educate them on how to manage and repay the debts is a conduit to siphon off money from the treasury and externalize it to their offshore accounts. How else could one perceive this strange move by the PF regime hardly a year before the general elections? Isn’t it odd that almost a year before the general elections, a financially distressed government should undertake to enter into an excessively costly deal that will run over a period of three years, more strangely, with a company that has its headquarter in Hamilton, Bermuda? Deliberately the tender was not locally advertised in order to leave out Zambian experts to participate.”
Kalala said if the government genuinely wanted to address its debt problems, “would it not have been ideal to invest the $5 million in mining of the newly discovered gold in North-Western Province?”
“Their own Minister of Mines declared that there was more than enough gold to pay off all the debts that Zambia has. Instead of using the available resources for national interest, it is being given away to foreigners while the government wants to engage a foreign company to advise it on how to restructure the loans. This is absolutely ridiculous and mindless. There may be serious capacity deficiency in the PF administration but there is no lack of experienced financial and economic experts among Zambians to advise on how to handle the restructuring of debts that the PF regime has amassed for the country,” said Kalala. “If indeed the regime had good intention, they would have called upon these citizens to help them on how to deal with the mess they themselves have recklessly created for the country. The PF leadership has proved to be a cabal of schemers in plundering national resources. They should not be allowed to proceed with these audacious, dubious and Machiavellian manoeuvres to give away and loot our national resources, namely the gold and the $5 million. It is crystal clear that these are fraudulent projects. There is a hidden agenda like with the unneeded debasing of the Kwacha exercise that has been of no benefit and value to the nation. PF, President Lungu and his government have proved to be a liability to the nation. They should be given a red card in 2021.”