‘SUSPICIOUS’ COUNCIL OPERATIONS QUIZZED
By ROGERS KALERO A MEMBER of Parliament has accused some Kitwe City Council (KCC) officials of deliberately carrying out operations that are bent on worsening vulnerable people’s lives to make the Patriotic Front unpopular.
Kwacha Member of Parliament (MP) Joe Malanji claimed that some frustrated individuals at the council may be doing things that would make President Edgar Lungu and the PF unpopular.
Mr Malanji was speaking on Sunday during the PF media interactive forum at Continental Lodge in Riverside residential area.
The Kwacha constituency law maker was reacting to a recent operation undertaken by the council where it slashed fields of maize and vegetables in Mwaiseni Township without notifying the ward councillor Godfridah Chulu and the owners of the fields.
Mr Malanji said, while he did not support people cultivating crops in sewer corridors he was equally not supporting the harsh way in which the council was carrying out its operations against vulnerable people.
He said the council should embrace a consultative approach of doing things, instead of adopting the harsh approach where people are treated as if they were criminals. “I have been informed about the incident where the council slashed down crops in Mwaiseni area, but am yet to get more details. What I can say is that, some of the operations the council may be carrying out, may be spearheaded by frustrated people who want to make PF and President Lungu unpopular.
“We have seen some of the operations which the council has carried out and the response from the people has not been so good. So we have to be careful with some of the operations which the council is carrying out.
“Most of the operations by the council have just gone to worsen the lives of the vulnerable,” Mr Malanji said.
Mr Malanji said it was cruel for the council to wait for Mwaiseni residents to grow crops in the sewer corridors and then go to slash them down when they were about to harvest them.
He said he believed that all the land in Kitwe was under the surveillance of the local authority and so it should have moved in, before Mwaiseni residents started cultivating.
“Well, I really don’t know why the council is always reactive than pro-active. Even in issues of illegal structures, the council will wait for somebody to put up an illegal structure then move in to demolish that illegal structure.
Why didn’t the council stop that individual from building that illegal structure from the beginning?
“The same applies to the issue of those who grow vegetables in sewer lines. Instead of stopping them from the beginning, the council will wait for them to grow those vegetables and then move in, to slash them.
“Even before slashing those crops, the council should have told the owners of those crops not to cultivate in the sewerHIVline
next year,” He said.