29 murdered over witchcraft suspicions
TWENTY-NINE elderly people have been murdered in Muchinga
quarter of 2019 on suspicions of practicing witchcraft, Provincial Police Commissioner Joel Njase has said.
Mr Njase told the Daily Nation in an interview that killing of elderly people suspected to be practicing witchcraft had become rife in the province since 2015.
‘‘Murdering of elderly people suspected of practicing witchcraft had become rife in the province since 2015 but we have however seen a reduction because of the measures that have been put in place.
In 2017 the province recorded 85 witchcraft related murder cases, 76 in and in the first quarter of 2019,’’ Mr Njase said. Mr Njase said the police command targets to reduce the number of people murdered for allegedly practicing witchcraft to zero by 2021.
Mr Njase named Isoka, Mafinga, akonde and Lavushimanda as the most affected in witchcraft related killings.
Mr Njase has advised the public to avoid taking the law in their own hands by hiring criminals to murder people suspected to be witches or wizards.
rovince in the first
THE Zambian Government has assured the international community of its commitment to advance human capital development and empowerment of people with economic opportunities through social safety nets as espoused in the Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP).
National Development Planning Minister Alexander Chiteme said social safety nets were important to the Zambian Government.
In a speech read by permanent secretary (Development Planning) Chola Chabala, Mr Chiteme said the government appreciated that poverty and vulnerability did not only affect the ability to put food on the table but also extends to certain essential services and citizens’ opportunities to be self-sustaining and contribute to economic growth.
Mr Chiteme was speaking at the 8th annual ministerial roundtable on social safety nets: improving economic opportunities and human capital in changing world of work, at the 2019 spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC USA.
The minister explained that human capital development was a key catalyst to harnessing demographic dividends.
Mr. Chiteme emphasised the importance of using social safety nets in advancing economic opportunities.
He was concerned about the widening gap between the labour market demand and the training.
“We are channeling out people from training institutions who are not able to fit into industry and that is perpetuating informalisation of the economy. From most experiences in Africa, the informal sector is not broadly covered within the formal social protection schemes,” he said.
Meanwhile, speaking at the UN and World Bank coorganised ministerial meeting on strengthening resilience to debt vulnerability in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Mr. Chiteme said striking the right balance between development financing and containing debt vulnerability needs an international multifaceted framework.