Pay local contractors, Kampyongo urges gov’t
STEPHEN Kampyongo has challenged government to tell the nation why it is not paying the local suppliers and contractors even after the audit it conducted was concluded and the auditors paid.
Mr Kampyongo, who is Shiwan’gandu Patriotic Front (PF) Member of Parliament, said with the audit concluded, government should pay genuine local suppliers and contractors and deal with those that were not genuine if there were any.
He said the government owed huge sums of money to the local suppliers who supplied goods and services and the contractors who had offered services and met all the contractual obligations.
“Why is the government punishing innocent people? What they should do is to pay those who supplied genuinely and deal with those that were not genuine. Not paying them is not helping the situation,” Mr Kampyongo said.
Mr Kampyongo said delaying to pay the people who supplied to the government had a negative impact on the economy that was why some companies were laying off workers, the major reason there was no money in circulation.
And Mr Kampyongo likened the UPND way of governance as organized confusion because they do not seem to know what they were doing.
He said the UPND got into power on the premise that they were coming to fix what was broken under the PF but until today they still blame PF for their failure to fix.
Mr Kampyongo said under the UPND that came to fix the mining, sector has completely collapsed within two years as they had failed to bring back Mopani Copper Mine (MCP) and Konkola Copper Mine (KCM) and Kasenseli back to life.
He said citizens who were depending on the three mines had been condemned into destitution because they had lost their income as a result of government failure to find a lasting solution to the challenges facing the mines.
He said UPND had within a short period of time collapsed the agriculture sector and the country was now talking about importing mealie meal from outside because they exported all the maize.
“We warned them about these things but they never lis
tened because of their know it all attitude. This know-it-all attitude is going to destroy this country. They do not accept when they make mistakes and us in the PF, we admit our mistakes and make amends.”
“The UPND argue that everything is alright even at the time the whole nation was feeling the pinch, anyway Zambians will judge them in 2026,” Mr Kampyongo said. Mr Kampyongo also said transporting finished products using the TAZAMA pipeline was not secure and the pipeline also leaks which would be costly on the part of the government.
He said the pipeline was 800km long they do not know the security situation along the way for the to start using it for finished products
Mr Kampyongo has urged the ministers under the UPND to start operating like a cabinet that would be speaking with one voice that people were going to have confidence on and not what was currently obtaining.