President Hakainde Hichilema must fire Siakalima for the insult on the collective People of Luapula Province
By Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba
“Luapula People are suffering from two types of poverty. There is physical poverty and their poverty of the mind-Minister of Education”, Hon. Douglas Siakalima.
When I heard about these dangerous remarks allegedly made by the Minister of Education, Hon. Douglas Siakalima stoking ethnic tensions, I was reluctant to comment until I gathered sufficient information on the matter.
I have since established that Hon. Siakalima made these remarks during his appearance before the Parliamentary Orders Committee dealing with Education, chaired by Milanzi MP, Hon. Melesiana Phiri Chibwe.
The Committee was interrogating the impact of the free education policy in schools and communities.
Unbenkown to the Minister his data-set was false and Infact, Luapula Province has made tremendous progress dropping from 81.1% ten years ago to now 77.3%.
This is according to the recently issued report by the Zambia Statistics Agency -Highlights of the 2022 Poverty Assessment in Zambia.
The results show that poverty levels have gone slightly down in North-western (61.6% from 66.4%), Luapula (77.3% from 81.1%), Western (78.6% from 82.6%) and Northern (78.0% from 79.7%) provinces.
Muchinga province has the highest proportion of the population that is poor at 82.6 percent, followed by Western and Northern provinces.
Lusaka (27%) and Copperbelt (35.9%), had the least poverty levels though higher than in 2015.
The remarks by Siakalima are extremely dangerous and insensitive.
Tribal and discriminatory remarks stoke unecessary ethnic tensions and Zambia is already struggling with the issue of tribalism as the nation struggles with holding together national unity through the One Zambia, One Nation principal.
Since this development occurred, Members of Parliament from Luapula Province have signed a petition against Siakalima and the document has been submitted to the Speaker.
President Hakainde Hichilema has a duty to act and must immediately fire this reckless Minister who has displayed dangerous personal traits and beliefs against a group of people.
Mwamba calm down . The Minister was speaking within a given context. As a Minister of Education and Educationist he has to call out the perceived ills he has seen. The Minister Mentioned two issues pertaining to his Ministry. 1. Child enrollment following the introduction of free Education policy which is at 95000 in the province. 2. He mentioned made comparisons of School production units in Luapula Province to those in other provinces such as Eastern and Central Province which he said are doing far much better. Instead of stirring unnecessary tribal tensions find solutions to the low enrollment rate and ways and means of increasing productivity on the various production units. Let’s learn to tell each other the truth. For you it’s about exploiting every situation for political mileage For once let’s see the subject matter addressed by the various Leaders in the province. Children need to go back to School with all without your politics. In fact you are playing bad politics by stirring tribal tensions.
This chap is one of pfidiots that epitomizes mistatements for political mileage. Correct he totally ignores the two points the Minister raised but instead flashes totally different statistics to mislead the readers. Coincidentally he was and still remains silent on the lumezi idiots tribal utterances which have landed him on court but wuick to call for this Minister’s firing!
I support the Minister Syakalima…. This is what these PF criminals were comfortable with which was very unfortunate for our brothers and sisters.
Ba Minister, if the president disciplines you then it’s for political mileage towards 2026 elections in Luapula province.
Ambanwa, thanks for not supporting evil!
Ba Mwamba, it doesn’t help to get emotional about such statements. Generally, school is not taken seriously in Northern province where I come from. The same goes for Luapula province.
Poverty of the mind refers to a poor atitude and this is evident in my statement above. If you need further evidence, just look at the provincial results for the various benchmark examinations.
If I had the resources, I would have started a community school in my village. The amazing thing is a gentleman who tried to assist children with school requisites like shoes was labeled a Satanist. Now, poverty of the mind doesn’t get any worse than that!
So ba Mwamba, stop stirring up dust over innocent statements just to get some political mileage. We need to deal with this poverty of the mind (which unfortunately Mr. Mwamba is exhibiting) if we are to overcome physical poverty.
I totally agree with the minister’s statement and I donot view it as an insult by any stretch of the imagination.
You tribalists are very tunnel-visioned. You cant see parallells elsewhere. What happened to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and that whole chunk of Eastern Europe. People are still fighting on tribal lines there. The problem wont be solved because Bosnians, Serbs, Kosovites, etc all think they are a special group of people who cant mix with others so they end up fighting everyone they identify as not their tribe. Is that what you want to happen here when we have made progress towards development by uniting? Most of our children dont even know their tribes, they just know their nation and you now want to split them for political interests. Watch your mouths you cheap shallow politicians