CUSHION ZAMBIANS AGAINST HIGH FUEL PRICES, PULE ADVISES GOV’T
HIGH indebtedness should not be an excuse for Government’s failure to cushion citizens against the high cost of living Christian Democratic Party (CDP) President Danny Pule has said.
Dr Pule says the United States of America is one of the highly indebted countries in the world but does not abdicate its responsibilities of looking after its citizens even in times of economic slumps.
Dr. Pule said currently, Zambia was like a country without a government in place, things are moving haphazardly on their own.
He questioned where the central bank and the Ministry of Finance were amid the crisis where the local currency was at a free fall.
Dr. Pule said the Energy Regulation board (ERB) had increased the pump prices of fuel, with the exchange rate at K27 to a dollar, an indication that in the next few weeks, the prices of goods and services were likely to treble.
“This decision to increase the prices of fuel to K34 was reckless, UPND has no heart for the people, Zambians are going through a lot of pain and increasing the prices of fuel was like adding salt to the wound,” he said.
Dr. Pule said there were a lot of countries in Africa like Botswana and Rwanda and South Africa who are facing the same global economic challenges but they were still subsiding their citizens.
He said UPND should not be complaining about the debt because they have increased the debt burden even further since they formed government.
Dr. Pule said the UPND government has borrowed more than $6 billion and most of the money they are borrowing was for budget support which was just for consumption.
He said the World Bank was giving money to Zambia for budget support and that money does not stay at the central bank hence the Kwacha failing to stabilise.
Dr. Pule said the previous governments were borrowing for investment in infrastructure but the current government was borrowing for consumption.