UPND spreads lies

… to prop up HH

A SCAM in which UPND members in Southern Province have been going round misleading rural communities that Government projects such as the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) and the social cash transfer are funded by Hakainde Hichilema has been unearthed.

Southern Province Minister Edify Hamukale yesterday revealed that there were people taking advantage of the ignorance of some rural communities to spread misleading information that Mr. Hichilema was the one behind all the programmes and developmental projects Government had embarked on in the province.

Dr. Hamukale said it was disappointing that instead of the UPND owning up and acknowledging that President Edgar Lungu was scoring success in various sectors of national development, they had waged a serious propaganda campaign to project Mr. Hichilema as the brain behind what Govern- ment was doing in the area.

“In some rural parts of Southern Province, there are some people who are going round deceiving people that all the developmental projects that have been going on in the province are funded by Mr. Hichilema but the truth is that all the developmental projects that are on-going and those that are being completed in the province and anywhere else in Zambia are as a result of conscious and planned decisions by the PF Government.

“It is unfounded and uncalled for that these people are cheating citizens that the funds they are receiving through the social cash transfer, the roads, schools, clinics, solar hammer mills, the telephone towers and all manner of development in Zambia including FISP for our farmers are as a result of Mr. Hichilema’s funding. It is extremely unfair and irre- sponsible for anyone to be going in the rural areas to tell our people that developmental projects in Southern Province are funded by Mr. Hichilema,” Dr. Hamukale said. He said as provincial minister, he was not aware of any project that Mr. Hichilema initiated or funded, adding that what UPND needed to do was to admit that President Lungu had scored immense success other than spreading lies.

“What UPND must do is to come out in the open and give credit where it is due by admitting that President Lungu and his Government has delivered,” Dr Hamukale said.

But Mbabala UPND MP Ephraim Belemu dismissed Mr. Hamukale’s statement, branding it as false and that Mr. Hichilema had nothing to prove to the people of Zambia as his record spoke for him.