HH knows the hardships Zambians are going through – Imenda

UPND deputy secretary general Gertrude Imenda says President Hakainde Hichilema is a listening leader and is fully aware of the economic hardships citizens are facing and is working hard to improve the country’s economy.

Ms Imenda said Government through the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) gave small loans to individuals and cooperatives as a way of empowering them.

She said Government had put a lot of incentives in place to encourage people venture into maize production such as increasing the price of maize.

Ms Imenda said President Hichilema had put a lot of incentives and initiatives in place in response to the cries of the people.

“When President Hichilema decided to increase energy for production, was he not responding to the cries of the people that the price of mealie-meal is expensive? Maybe with them (opposition), they expected that we should do subsidies. We have no money,” Ms Imenda said.

She said subsidies were in production and not free money.

Ms Imenda said when UPND came into power, it found a huge debt of US$800 million for fuel subsidies left by the Patriotic Front.

“We inherited an empty treasury. So where are we going to get the money? The IMF will not give us money for subsidies. It is only in Africa where people beg for money to buy mealie-meal. It is a very bad culture.

So, to say that we are not a listening Government is not true. We are a listening Government but the measures we put in place are not immediate,” Ms Imenda said. She said UPND’s policies had responded to people’s needs and cries but the measures were not of immediate results.

“The debt restructuring itself is about listening to people’s cry that the country’s debt had choked the citizens. All the money we were earning was going to pay the creditors and it was not enough. These creditors would have come to grab Zesco, ZNBC and other strategic assets,” Ms Imenda said.

She said the opposition should concentrate on growing their political parties and not always talking about UPND.

“They should stop concentrating on HH. Every day it is HH this, HH that. Let them sell their own manifesto and tell Zambians what they are going to do instead of busy criticising everything that we do. These opposition people have not told the people what they are going to do themselves,” Ms Imenda said.