ZNS mealie meal not benefiting Zambians – Kunda

POOR Zambians have continued being subjected to queuing for the Zambia National Service (ZNS) Eagle mealie meal because the commodity is always in short supply across the country where most are buying not for consumption but for resale in other areas and across borders, Howard Kunda has observed.

Mr Kunda, the president of Zambia Wake -Up Party (ZAWAPA) has blamed the UPND government for having failed to properly manage the milling industry by completely sidelining traditional milling companies that had been serving the nation from the days of UNIP.

Mr Kunda said the never-ending mealie meal queues were a sign that Zambia was food insecure and that if government was not going to resolve the matter by engaging private traditional millers on how best to manage the crisis, food riots could easily break out in the country.

Mr Kunda said it was annoying that the ZNS Eagle milling which government was bragging was cheaper and affordable to ordinary citizens was in short supply because those who had access to the product were buying in bulk and reselling at higher prices in other outlets and across the borders.

“I have been talking about the issue of Zambians queuing for mealie meal for some time now and it is certainly annoying. The UPND is admittedly a failed government. They have collapsed the agriculture sector by failing to deliver fertilizer and seed to farmers. Now we are being subjected to the ZNS mealie meal that is coming through Eagle Milling. We are seeing long queues of citizens struggling to buy mealie meal. Our citizens are not benefiting from this ZNS Eagle mealie meal because most of it end up in outlets where it is resold at a much higher price which our people cannot afford,” Mr Kunda said.

He stated that Zambians were going through worse times than what was happening in the Patriotic Front (PF) government, saying the era of citizens lining up for mealie meal had been reintroduced by the UPND government because they lacked plans of how a country should be governed.

He said it was unacceptable for the UPND government to be subjecting citizens to queuing for the staple food when in fact had found a lot of maize when they formed government which they carelessly exported without thinking of Zambians.

“Zambians are queuing for mealie meal because they cannot have access to it. They see ZNS trucks offloading mealie meal at their selected outlets and rush to buy because they know some unscrupulous people would but in bulk and resale at a much higher prices than that from our private millers. We are basically killing our milling companies because the business environment is not favouring them,” Mr Kunda said.

He has called on government to engage private milling companies that had from time immemorial been supplying mealie meal with consistency because they understood the market and had the capacity to stablise the prices of the commodity.