LEADERSHIP MOVEMENT FUMES

IT is not only ridiculous, but irresponsible and careless to give 20, 000 hectares of land to foreigners to cultivate when Zambians are being labelled ‘squatters’ in their own country, the Leadership Movement has charged.

Jairos Ngoma, the Leadership General Secretary says Zambians were being reduced to squatters by a government which promised to improve the lives of the majority poverty-stricken Zambians.

Mr Ngoma said, instead of giving Kenyans more than 20,000 hectares of land, the UPND should have developed its own polices to encourage agricultural production, promote food security and alleviate poverty

In an interview in Kitwe yesterday, Mr Ngoma said, the UPND or the New Dawn administration has failed to come up with policies to support and promote production because it was a government which was consumption-oriented

“We cannot have modern day colonialism where an African country can be colonising us, boasting that there is cheap land in Zambia. You even given them 99 years. 20,000 hectares of land has been given to Kenyans, but if you follow it up on the Kenyan side, it is hovering around 20,000 to 40, 000 hectares of land and the Minister of Agriculture was bragging that there is cheap labour and land in Zambia. I will use it to grow the maize and I will get all their maize,’’ Mr Ngoma said

When asked whether it was the Kenyans or the Zambians government to blame for the decision to give the more than 20,000 hectares to Kenyans, Mr Ngoma said the UPND government was to blame for giving the more than 20,000 hectares of land to Kenyans “The problem with the UPND government is that it believes in consumption and does not understand the importance of production. If it believed in production, it would not have given the more than 20,000 hectares of land to Kenyans.” “The best thing would have been to use the more than 20,000 hectares of land as State farms where junkies can be used to produce maize to satisfy the local demand before exporting to other countries to earn foreign exchange instead of giving land to foreigners ,’’ he said

And Patriotic Front (PF) Copperbelt Media Director Munalula Moola has warned that Zambians will not benefit anything from the minerals and other natural resources in the country because those in government were puppets of capitalists.

And Mr Moola has said the UPND will become increasingly brutal in 2023 because of being insecure and will restrict the democratic space of opposition parties and also abuse officers of the Zambia Police Service to detain and arrest opposition politicians’ charges on trampled up charges Mr Moola said Zambians have realised that the UPND were a puppets of capitalists who do not mean well for them and that was why they were ready to vote them out and replace it with a more caring and responsible government like the PF which would serve Zambians genuinely