GOVT, KCM PART WAYS
.. We have been taken for a ride by some of these investors for a long time - Lungu
GOVERNMENT is separating from Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and will invoke the legal process to that effect, President Edgar Lungu announced in Ndola last night. President Lungu has assured the nation that his Government would follow the due process of the law in disengaging the Vedanta Resources, the investor in KCM. "We have been taken for a ride by some of these investors. So I am here to announce that Government is divorcing KCM," he said. Mr Lungu said this during a meeting with the Mineworkers Union of Zambia (MUZ) and Zambia Chamber of Mines at Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola.
He said Government was parting ways with KCM. Mr Lungu said KCM already owed Government approximately US$216 and that it was time was time that Government freed itself from the slavery of some investors in the country. He however noted that Government would not implement a hostile take-over of KCM but was going to do so under the confines of the law. He said the decision was arrived at after a number of consultative meetings in Cabinet and the legal advisors. The President said that it would be a failure on part of Government to sit down and watched things go to the worst in the mining sector. Mr Lungu stated that the move was not aimed at intimidating anyone but to safeguard the interest of the people and the country. He however warned Mopani Copper Mines to change its ways of conducting business or risk being the next to go. Meanwhile, Zambia Chamber of Mines president, Goodwell Mateyo, thanked the President for his decision to separate from KCM. Mr Mateyo noted that the mining firm had been limping for many years now and that Government's decision was exactly what the miners needed. MUZ president Joseph Chewe said Government had done the right thing and the union was fully behind the state. Mr Chewe noted that due to the challenges at KCM, a lot of Zambians had been affected as they had lost their jobs.