HH ATTACKED FOR POLITICISING ROAD WORKS REMEDIALS

THERE is no need for political antics on the rework on Lumumba Road as AVIC International agreed to redo the works on some roads in Lusaka because there was no corruption involved in the awarding of its contract, Ministry of Housing and Infrastructure permanent secretary Charles Mushota has said. Mr Mushota said it was unfortunate that some people wanted to politick about everything government is doing. He was reacting to UPND leader, Hakainde Hichilema’s claims that AVIC did a bad job because the contract was corruptly awarded by the Ministry of Housing and Infrastructure. Mr Mushota said if there was corruption involved in the contract, the contractor would not have accepted to redo the work. He said in an interview yesterday, the contractor accepted to redo the work because it admitted doing a bad job in some parts of the road. But Mr Mushota told Mr Hichilema to stop politicking on issues he did not have information on. He said government had powers to instruct any contractors who had done shoddy works to redo the job. Mr Mushota said it was unfortunate that the opposition in the country only knew about spreading falsehoods in order to mislead the nation. “Mr Hichilema should know that the contractor cannot agree to redo the work if there was corruption involved. If there is something which has gone wrong as government we have rights to instruct the contractor to redo the work. In a show of supremacy, Mr Hichilema yesterday interrupted traffic on the roads which are under construction in Lusaka as his body guards stopped vehicles to pave way for him to inspect the road works. Earlier in the day, Mr Hichilema went to Central Police Station to visit Photographer who has been arrested and detained for criminal libel. Mr Hichilema , with life Facebook coverage on various social media platforms, was however turned away by police as it was not visiting hour.