Shortage of Eagle mealie meal may spark food riots – Sakala
THE continued shortages of the Zambia National Service (ZNS) Eagle mealie meal in most parts of the country has the potential to trigger food riots as citizens are ever getting agitated that they have to be made to line up and even scramble for the staple food, Paradius Sakala has cautioned.
Mr Sakala has bemoaned the continued shortage of the Eagle mealie meal in Petauke where long and winding queues have been witnessed the last one month almost sparking riots and stampedes in some areas.
Mr Sakala, the former Sinda district commissioner has advised government to urgently call for an indaba with private millers and the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) to see how best the challenge of the shortages of mealie meal could be best addressed.
He said citizens were getting highly agitated and that emotions could easily explode over the failure to have access to mealie meal and that there was a real danger that the country could experience food riots.
“It is very sad that Zambians are being subjected to lining up for mealie meal at this time of the year. Government must realise that the ZNS Eagle Milling is a project that is failing.
Government should call an indaba with the ZNFU and the private millers who it seems have not been part of the equation in resolving the mealie meal crisis. These queues we are seeing is a confirmation of an economy that is in the doldrums and there is a real danger that we could have food riots if this
Eagle mealie meal will continue being in short supply,” Mr Sakala said.
He said Zambians should brace for the worst scenario in the non-availability of mealie meal in the country as the prices shall without doubt more than double in the coming months.
Mr Sakala has attributed the shortage of mealie meal to the government’s decision to make the market unfavourable for the private millers who were being made not to fully participate competitively by the subsidised ZNS mealie meal.
“ZNS has announced that it will produce 15, 000 metric tonnes of maize but the national consumption is more than two million metric tonnes.
I fear that we could be headed for food riots of the 1990s unless government moves to create a business environment where private millers can participate competitively.
In Livingstone, we saw people queue for mealie meal and they were told they had wrongly lined up and had to be pushed and shoved
around. If what we are seeing is not contained, those hungry people can easily cause confusion,” Mr Sakala said.
He explained that if the country was food insecure, that had the possibility of putting the national security at risk, warning that a hungry man was always an angry man.
He is also wondering whether the maize government was planning to import would be the same maize that was exported and if not how safe Zambians would be from not consuming the mealie meal that was Genetically Modified Organisms.
Mr Sakala said the mealie meal that would be produced from the imported maize would be much higher and certainly unfordable to millions of Zambians.
“So far, we have heard from the Vice President, Ms Mutale Nalumango and ZNS tell Zambians that the GMO mealie that was stolen was safe for consumption. Certainly, we are not safe and we are being fed with GMOs by this government,” Mr Sakala said.