WHAT SHALL WE TELL THE PEOPLE? – Hon. Mutotwe Kafwaya

WHAT SHALL WE TELL THE PEOPLE? By Lunte Member of Parliament Hon. Mutotwe Kafwaya

Aah!!!Whatever – if the Veep can say we sold maize to pay the farmers who supplied – anything goes.

Just tell them that because of the unprecedented draught and it’s devastating effects, especially on the lives of common Zambians, we shall realign the 2024 National Budget. And we shall present it to the National Assembly – to that house called parliament.

The thinking could be that – who is not feeling the negative effects of this draught? We all are! Most small companies without altenative sources of energy who are load shedded for 20 hours a day can not survive at all – they just have to close shop. Otherwise who pays rent for a building where power only comes for 4 hours a day from 02AM to 06AM? If you are a saloon, where do you get a client in that bad timing? Think of any business, how do they survive? It’s virtually impossible. So it’s a salable story isn’t it?

So, let’s go! Just tell them that it’s a budget realignment on that account. Okay announcement made and firmed. As we waited for the realignment of the budget, the minister comes in with a Supplimentary Estimate to the 2024 National Budget.

Personally, I got a little confused. And naturally I joined some colleagues in making some parliamentary acceptable noise of disapproval. A bit more than this was not making sense.

Anyway as things would unfold, at this point even the minister appeared quite confused to be honest. Instead of just following the normal bill laying procedure since this was just a Supplementary Budget, he would beg the speaker to resolve the house into a committee of supply – well! We questioned that but he didn’t withdraw the request, and he’d later read a statement from the table of the house which explained in detail the why’s and what’s about that supplementary budget.

At the end of his delivery of that speech, the speaker did not ask a question to resolve the house into the committee of supply. That request from the minister is still pending even as of this long weekend. Instead, the speaker referred the Supplementary Budget to the Expanded Planning & Budgeting Committee.

So that is where the document is as of now – the next time we shall hear about this is when the chairman of the expanded comes back home to the plenary to deliver a speech.

If you’d want to know, the speaker also never allowed the ministers statement, which he delivered in support of his Supplementary Budget to be debated in any way. A very strange occurrence in the house where a whole minesterial statement went through National Assembly of Zambia without oversight.

What may never happen is that the speaker might never put a question for the house to resolve into the committee of supply and also that the policy statement which the minister delivered may never be debated. This is the first time I have witnessed such house conduct. But, just to let it be in order to maintain the decorum of the house, and just say to self, stop here.

Happy Sunday.

Restoring EVERYTHING PATRIOTIC.
MK30.06.2024